


Nell

by NextToSomething



Category: British Singers RPF, David Bowie (Musician)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Museums, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:11:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NextToSomething/pseuds/NextToSomething
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An archivist fresh from school, Nell is overjoyed to start her new job at an exclusive depository in Manhattan. The mysterious owner soon becomes a larger part of her life than she, or even he, anticipated. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a one shot, as the first chapter will probably make fairly obvious. The muse didn't stop there, however, and this became a work in progress. I have struggled with the pacing of this piece since the beginning because of the first chapter's ability to stand on its own. For that, I apologize.
> 
> Oh, and, read with care.This is a fairly steamy story.

Nell didn't believe dream jobs existed. She knew from experience that, at best, she could hope to have a job that challenged her and that she only dreaded some of the time. As a young archivist fresh from graduate school, she had had her fair share of grunt work and was looking forward to finding a job that valued her abilities.

She expressed this desire to her past thesis adviser in a late night email. Nell knew it was important to keep in touch with those that could act as a professional contact sometime in the future, but she found it an added bonus that she really enjoyed the company of her Dr. Thomas, or Susan, as she had become post graduation.

When her inbox pinged with incoming mail, Nell was excited to see that Susan had heard of a job opening in a small depository in Manhattan and had offered up Nell as a candidate.

Nell scanned through the job description and sent a brief email requesting more information on the opening to the powers that be. She then emailed Susan with a hearty, "Thank you!" for the opportunity to pursue such a coveted position.

It was when she received the email describing in further detail the position that she realized this may be as close to a dream job as she could ever hope to get. The depository was a small archive working for a private owner, a "successful musician," as the email stated. The name of the owner would be released only if she was accepted for the position, in the intent of protecting the privacy of the owner. The thought thrilled Nell. Working in a small collection, in the bustle of Manhattan for some powerful client seemed too good to be true.

The email was sent directly from the curator, Rita, who was pleased to hear Susan talk so highly of her past student. Nell had a very good feeling about this.  
Sure enough, after taking a train in for an interview and talking endlessly about her experience in database creation and maintenance, her interest in small collections, her dedication to customer confidentiality and not to mention her love of music and the city, Nell was invited to start as an archivist for the collection later that month. The assistant curator, Marie, also offered to rent her a room in her apartment. Nell was elated.

Once she arrived for her first full day of work, Rita sat her down to go over the details of her day and to answer any questions. The one question that had been plaguing her since she made the train ride into the city to move her few belongings into her room was: who was the mystery owner of the collection?

"Well," Rita closed her appointment book and stood up from behind her desk. "I think that about covers it. I'll show you downstairs where the collection is housed. And where you will be spending the majority of your time."

Nell followed after her and cleared her throat.

"I did have one more question, about the collection?"

Rita smiled at her from over her shoulder. "Wondering who the mysterious musician is, hmm?"

Nell faltered a little at the top of the stairs. "Well, yes, actually."

Rita unlocked the door at the foot of the staircase and smiled again. "Don't worry, dear. I think the collection will be more revealing than you think."

Nell's heart jumped. Someone as famous as all that?

When Rita opened the door, the breath caught in Nell’s chest. Most of the items were packed away in archival crates and racks, but some things, enough things, were left in display. A miniature exhibit meant for those closest to the collection. There was an aquamarine suit with absurdly wide lapels, a quilted catsuit in royal blues and golds, a leather Union Jack trench coat, and a pair of platform boots arranged in a glass box. Nell recognized these things. She swallowed.

"Is this... Do I work for David Bowie?"

Rita laughed. "Good eye. I knew you were a Bowie fan the first time I met you. You can always tell."

Nell was indeed a fan, and this was more than she could take in at the moment. Never before had she been tempted to touch a display for any reason other than for archival and professional purposes. But now, she wanted to run her hands along the material of the outfits, just to touch the history of them.

"Don't expect to meet him, though." Rita's crisp London accent admonished. "He's a bit of a homebody these days. A recluse even."

"No, of course. I'm just a little shocked." She fidgeted with the sleeve of her blouse, pulling it farther down her arm.

"Yes, well, it will fade in time. Come, come. Let's get started," Rita called as she headed back up the stairs. Nell blinked at the room and it's contents for a moment longer before jogging up the stairs after Rita.

\---

Nell's main priority was the digitization of the collection. Much of it was satisfactorily cataloged, but there was little digital record of the collection of costumes, notes, art, and other memorabilia. She was to usher them into the digital age. She also thought she had heard Rita and Marie talking about a possible London exhibit, but she tried not to get her hopes up on that front.

She settled in very quickly, finding Marie to be funny and quirky, and Rita very grounded and kind. They left her to work most of the time and occasionally sent her put on clerical errands. She didn't mind filling the bottom rung of the operation, however. The pay was fine and her work was engaging.

She thought she knew a great deal about David Bowie, but as her archiving turned more to research, she found she had only scratched the surface. He seemed truly fascinating, if a little cold.

She never really dreamed she would meet him, but then, she never expected to be working this job either. To be around these fascinating artifacts everyday and entrusted with their maintenance and cataloging was dream enough for Nell. Actually meeting the man seemed almost greedy.

\---

Nell had almost gotten into a rhythm at work the day that the unexpected happened. She had gathered most of the collection into the database and would begin the process of hiring out vendors to digitize the pieces as well as perfecting the metadata once she had the bones of the database done.

Marie came rushing into the small basement workroom, her face flushed. She clutched at her side as she tried to catch her breath.

"Are you alright?" Nell asked.

"David Bowie...is here," Marie gasped.

"What?" Nell asked.

Marie straightened and glanced behind her, her breathing a little more regular. "David, Mr. Bowie, is here. Apparently there is some to-do in London and most of the collection is heading to an exclusive exhibit. He's here to take a look at the collection."

Nell’s heart was racing. He was here?

"Why'd he come in? The collection is almost completely cataloged." Nell clicked around on her laptop for a few moments, then turned it towards Marie. "It's all here in the online archive."

Marie snapped the laptop shut and leaned in. "I know that, Nell. But apparently David, uh Mr. Bowie...is it Mr. Bowie or Mr. Jones? Anyway, he's very visual. He--"

She whirled around as the sound of footfalls echoed down the cement stairwell.

"Is that him?" Nell whispered in a panic.

"I don't know, probably!" Marie hissed back. The sound of voices joined the footsteps, and Marie quickly started smoothing her hair. Nell frantically felt at her own hair, knowing it was in a wild mess. She grabbed a pencil from the worktable and, in a practiced move she had perfected in the long working hours of grad school, twisted her hair up and around it, before stabbing the pencil back through the knot, effectively securing it.

"The bulk of the collection is housed down here, as you'll remember, though we'll have to have Nell unpack much of it for you." Rita appeared through the doorway first, her clipped tones calm and professional as usual. She had a long history dealing with the musician.

He was close behind her, listening intently. He looked different than Nell had expected. More casual, in dark denim jeans and a pullover sweater, though still neat and trim. His expression was serious and though he was many years her senior, Nell found him strikingly handsome.

His gaze drifted momentarily from Rita and fell on her. His eyes narrowed when they met hers, and she quickly looked away.

"Ah, yes," Rita interjected. "This is Nell. You've met Marie before I believe."

"Yes, I could never forget Marie." He smiled briefly and kissed Marie quickly on the cheek. She grinned prettily, then made a face of frantic joy as he turned away from her. Nell coughed to cover her laughter.

"Nell, is it?" He had turned his attention to her fully now, and she shifted on the balls of her feet. She tugged nervously at the sleeve of her blouse and extended her hand. His eyes flicked down at her movement.

"It's so thrilling to meet you, Mr... Er..."

He grasped her hand. "Just David."

"David." She repeated. His smile widened, then a mischievous gleam sparked in his strange eyes and he roughly tugged the sleeve of her blouse up her arm.

She gasped and tried to pull her hand away, but he held her fast and lifted her arm up to eye level.

Inked along the inside of her arm were words penned in nearly illegible handwriting. It was a tattoo she had gotten early in college, though one she had never regretted. Until now.

"What's this, then?" He ran his thumbnail along the bend of her elbow, scraping over the words. It hurt! She tried again to pull her arm free.

"Just a tattoo," Nell ground out from between clenched teeth. She looked helplessly to Marie, but she held her hands up in a gesture of uncertainty.

"I quite like it. What does it say?"

Nell yanked her arm again.

"Nothing important."

"Nell," Rita cut in. "I didn't know you had any tattoos." She stepped closer. "Let's have a look."

"Really," Nell tried pushing her shirt sleeve over it, but David held that in place as well. "It's nothing. Just a stupid little saying I got put on in college."

"I can't quite read it," Rita muttered.

"It says," David turned her arm a little more, "'and the shame was on the other side.'"

Marie covered her mouth in something akin to horror and Nell could feel her face heat with color.

"'The shame'...David, aren't those some of your lyrics? 'Heroes,' isn't it?" Rita took a step back, either oblivious of Nell’s mortification or choosing to ignore it.

"It is, that." He smiled more broadly, though it looked to Nell like he was baring his teeth at her. "And it looks as if it is in my handwriting."

Nell tugged her hand a final time, and David finally released her. She felt tears prick at her eyes; she wanted to run from the room.

"It was a picture in a book, some music biography." Her voice snapped a little more than she had hoped it would, but she was too ragged to care. "It was something I thought interesting and so I got it as a tattoo."

"You don't need to defend yourself to me, love." He was still standing very close. Nell was shaking in irritation. "I can''t say it upsets me to see my words scrawled across pretty things."

"Yes, well." She tugged again at her shirt and scrubbed at her arm. "I never really expected you to see it, now did I?"

"Nell, don't be so cross," Rita chided. "It's just a bit of fun. I think it's a lovely idea."

"Yeah," Marie chimed in from behind them. "Very cool."

Nell said nothing. It was all she could do to keep from crying in front of them all. Meanwhile, David continued to watch her. He seemed so _satisfied_. He seemed to truly enjoy her humiliation. Anger flared in her chest.

"Let's carry on, shall we?" Rita began for the door. "We have a lot to accomplish for this shipment."

David raked his gaze down Nell once more before turning and following Rita out. Once she heard them make their way back up the stairs, Marie rushed to her side.

"My God, are you alright? That was brutal."

Nell collapsed to the floor, burying her face in her hands.

"I never expected to meet the man!Who would? I've never been so humiliated. The way he just," she choked a little, scrubbing angrily at the tears that were finally making little tracks down her cheeks, "just leered at me."

She recalled the look in his eyes, his enjoyment of her discomfort. The way he took in her figure before he left. Like he was...aroused.

The thought prickled at her. She had fantasized about the man off and on, especially after she began her work for the archive. But in her fantasies, he had always been decidedly less cruel. The worst of it was, she wasn't sure she hadn't liked his mockery, on some level. If she was being honest, she was turned on as well. Surely it was the unnerving look in his eyes. He had looked hungry, and Nell had felt deliciously powerless. She flushed again with this realization.  
She had liked it. She felt disgusted.

"Don't beat yourself up over this. He's a sick bastard. He totally got off on that. It's not your fault." Marie reached out and straightened her friend's shirt, lopsided from her constant pulling.

"Just throw yourself into your work. The exhibit will take your mind off of all that."

Nell sniffed. "You're right. I-- I'll be fine."

Marie eventually left and Nell set about her day, trying to put the earlier encounter out of her mind. And failing miserably.

\---

Nell's back was aching as she plopped down in front of the computer to cross reference the running spreadsheet she had of the artifacts to be prepared. She had been unloading crates for hours, carefully noting what repairs needed to be made, the general condition of the piece and the suitability for travel. Her vision was starting to cross. Glancing at the small clock on the screen, she groaned. It was already after two in the morning.

Nell had been blindly whirling through work to try to erase the earlier memory of David's mockery of her. It had been so mortifying. She absently touched the tattoo at the inside of her arm, feeling all sorts of shame, despite its affirmation. And now she had worked far too late into the night. Rita would have a fit if she knew. She had plenty of time to prepare the collection for travel, but she could only seem to escape the wicked glint of David's eyes while immersed in her work.

She heard a door slam upstairs and groaned.

"I swear I was just leaving Rita! I didn't mean to stay so late!" she yelled over her shoulder.

She heard her boss coming down the stairs and rushed to straighten the work table, snapping her laptop closed.

"Won't you stay a little longer, pet?"

Nell whirled around at the sound of David's voice. He was leaning casually against the doorjamb, his arms crossed. He wore the same outfit as earlier, though a bit more disheveled and untucked.

Nell braced herself against the worktable and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. I was just leaving. I didn't mean to stay so late."

"So you said." His lips quirked in a smile that made Nell’s heart race.

"I-is there something I can help you with? Is there something else you’d like to see?"

His smile widened and she clutched the table all the harder.

"I did hope to find you here." He straightened and made his way to her, stopping uncomfortably close in front of her.

"I-I don't usually stay this late. I was just a little...distracted."

"And what was distracting you, sweet?"

Nell swallowed again and David’s eyes flicked to her lips. Gathering some of her nerve, she tipped up her chin.

"I had a rather startling encounter earlier today."

David chucked and flashed his teeth in a grin.

"Cheeky girl."

"Look, Mr. Bowie...er-- Jones--"

"David." His eyes bored into hers.

"D-David. If there isn't anything I can help you with, I would like to go home, now."

"Now, now." He laid a hand on the worktable behind her, further closing the space between them. "I came down here because I thought I would like to apologize to you for earlier."

Nell quickly shook her head. "It's fine, really. You were just having a laugh."

"Nell." His voice deepened and the sound of her name on his lips sent a thrill through her spine. Her breathing was ragged and she wished he would just take a step back.

"I said, 'I thought I would like to apologize to you.'" He wet his lips. "Though now that I see you, flustered and tired and strung so _tight_ , I am realizing that I would not like to apologize to you at all."

His look was unfathomable. Something, Nell wasn't sure what, burned in his eyes. Anger? Annoyance? She shuddered a breath. Desire?

Never desire.

But he was looking at her so intently. He was standing so close. He smelled like soap and cigarettes and mint. What had he said? That he didn't want to apologize to her? What did that even mean? His eyes drifted to her mouth again and Nell swallowed.

"Then," she whispered slowly, "what would you like to do?" She nearly bit her lip to keep the question at bay. She had no idea where the words had come from, nor the courage to utter them. It sounded like an invitation!

The wicked gleam from earlier that day was back in David's eyes as he tilted his head to the side, regarding Nell.

"I would like to fuck you."

His abrupt statement knocked the wind out if her. Her eyes were wide with disbelief and he seemed to revel in her apparent fear.

"I would like to tip you back over this table and fuck you until you scream. I want to hear you stutter my name again, Nell."

She was breathing raggedly through her mouth now, and heat was pooling in her stomach. She was scared, but achingly aroused. She wanted to push him away; she wanted to drag him to her. He was teasing her, even now. Embarrassment burned through her, even as her desire flared.

She should say something, do something! She wet her lips and he watched her intently. His focus on her mouth distracted her further and she couldn't keep her voice from wobbling.

"I--wh-- why?" She really wished she could stop stuttering.

"Your tattoo." Starting at her wrist, he trailed a finger up the inside of her arm. He drew the sleeve of her blouse up and traced the words marking her there.

"I am a vain man, and seeing my handiwork etched across the arm of such a deliciously meek girl excites me."

A small noise sounded in the back of Nell’s throat.

"Well." David planted both hands on the worktable, bringing him closer than he had yet tried, caging Nell. "I have told you what I would like to do. Won’t you tell me what you want?"

Her mind whirled. Her hands ached from gripping the table's edge for so long and she was feeling a little faint. God, she wanted him. _Say something!_

He chuckled at her hesitation.

"Or shall I find out for myself?"

Without a pause he dipped a hand down the front of her trousers. His fingers found their way under her panties and, with a slight brush over her clit, he slipped a finger inside her.

Nell gasped at the sudden intrusion as well at the mortifying realization of how aroused she had become.

"Christ, my girl. You are absolutely sopping." He began to curl his finger inside her, pushing against her most sensitive spot. Nell choked at the sensation.

He was right; she was wet. Very wet. She felt her face heat, angry that she was entirely incapable of disguising her emotions- and desire. He increased the pressure on that sensitive spot so shallowly-set within her and already she felt her release building. He withdrew, only to reenter her with a second finger. Her inner walls began to clutch at him and she whimpered.

Her head fell back as she found herself hurtling towards climax, whether she wanted to or not. He grabbed her jaw roughly, bringing her face close. His brow was furrowed as he forced Nell to look him in the eye. He ground his palm against her and she fell over the edge.

A little cry erupted from her as she rode out her orgasm. It was quick but powerful. And he had watched her face the whole time. Studied her as she quaked around his fingers. Her breath shuddered, but she continued to hold his gaze.

Fingers still inside her, he posed his question again.

"What do you want?"

She lifted a hand and laid it on his chest. She could push him away and try to leave the room with as much dignity as she could muster. Or she could drag him to her, and experience the wicked delight he promised. The man was right- she was meek. Nell had rarely stood up and taken what she wanted.

His eyes were intense on hers as he waited for her answer.

She clutched at the fabric of his sweater, though she lost the nerve to pull him to her. He took this as answer enough and brought his mouth down crushingly hard on hers.

He renewed the thrusting of his fingers in her sex as he pulled her lips apart with his teeth. He was kissing her with such fervor, Nell was surprised to find herself mirroring his actions with equal eagerness. It almost hurt, but she was determined to take as much as she gave, to at least attempt to match his power. She brought her hands to his hair and tore at it, dragging him closer. Her silence was broken as little sounds began to bubble up from within her, vibrating against their joined lips. His tongue battled through the barrier of her lips and teeth and intertwined with hers. His mouth was hot and he tasted like a cigarettes and whiskey. Nell felt like she was drowning.

He broke away and withdrew his hand from her. She wasn't able to contain the noise of protest that escaped her.

"Patience, my girl," he purred. He pulled her blouse from the waistband of her trousers. With his hands fisted in the material he paused.

"Do you like this blouse?"

Drowsy with desire, she belatedly nodded her head.

"It's my favorite."

He smiled broadly and in a quick movement, shredded the thin material. She cried out in pain. He chuckled as he took in her nakedness; she hadn't worn a bra. Pulling the ruined material down her arms, he kissed at the angry red marks the force had left on her pale skin.

"Something to remember me by," he muttered as he took one of her small breasts into his mouth.

She would mourn the shirt's loss tomorrow, she thought, as his ministrations caused her to arch against him. With hard, broad strokes of his tongue, he suckled her. She cried out, overwhelmed by his assault on her sensitive flesh.

"That's right, my girl," he growled as he ran his tongue along the underside of her breast. "Don't hold back."

He nipped at her.

"Because I surely won't."

Nell began to squirm, trying to ease the tension that had begun building again at her core. Feeling suddenly bold, she let one of her hand fall from the tangles of his hair and hesitantly ground her palm against the hard heat of him.

He made a strangled noise, apparently startled. He grabbed her wrist and held her fast.

"We shall get to that, Nell, I can promise you." He pressed himself into her hand. Even through the denim of his pants she could feel how hard and hot he was. She made to grasp at him again.

He tightened his grip on her wrist, to the point of pain. She bit back a scream.

"Don't make me hurt you, again, love. I'll fuck you yet. But first-"

He made good on his earlier promise and tipped her back onto the worktable. In the same moment he was dragging the remainder of her clothing down her hips, exposing her fully to the cool of the basement. Before she could cover herself, his mouth was on her. 

She cried out again. He was thorough in his exploration of her and she knotted her hands in her hair to keep from clawing at his shoulders. Her pencil had failed to keep her hair tamed and it fanned out in wild tangles over the table.

She arched as he delved his tongue into her and attempted to wriggle her hips away from him. She was over-stimulated and his taking of her was too much. But he dug his fingers roughly into the softness of her inner thighs and only spread her wider. He ran his tongue from the base of her up to her clit, before circling there. Before she could adjust to the sensation, he slipped lower down and entered her with his tongue, causing her to buck against him. She felt herself tightening and feared she would orgasm again. The pleasure and pain of it would surely break her. Seeming to sense her fear, he intensified the pressure of his tongue on her, in her.

She began gasping and pushed at his shoulders.

"I-- God, I can't! Please..."

Briefly, he pressed his cheek into her thigh, murmuring against her folds. "You can, and you will."

With one more hard pass of his tongue, she came. Hard, shatteringly hard. Her back arched painfully as she wailed in release. He pressed his hand over her mound, applying torturous pressure as she rode out her orgasm. It rolled over her in violent waves and she lost sense of her body.

After a few minutes, she became aware of him. He had straightened and was staring down at her. She realized she must look a wreck, her wild hair fisted in her hands. Completely naked, covered in a sheen of sweat. His face was so stern as he looked over her. She sat up, thoroughly embarrassed. She had so recklessly writhed against him, and now his stillness unnerved her. She made to cover herself, her hair falling over her shoulders.

He grabbed her wrists, though more gently this time. He pulled her arms away from her body, and continued to stare boldly at her nakedness. She turned her head to the side, afraid of his expression. What did he see? How painfully skinny she was? How the blue of her veins were visible through the pale skin of her small breasts?

He pulled her right arm out straight.

"Why did you get this?" He indicated at her tattoo, which stood out sharply on her naked arm.

That again. She wished he would leave the tattoo alone.

"To help me be brave." She turned to face him, feeling anything but. "I'm not, really. Brave, that is."

He released her wrists and began working at the buckle of his belt. He tugged his sweater over his head, leaving him in a worn t-shirt, and finished undoing his pants. All the while looking hard and steadily at her. Her heart was hammering against her rib cage, but she held his gaze. She could do that, if nothing else.

He freed himself and, grabbing her hips, yanked her down towards him. He rubbed his considerable length against her tender sex, through her folds, spreading her wetness. He began to prod at her opening and she caught her lip between her teeth. But she didn't break eye contact. She didn't lay back down. She spread her legs wider, accommodating him, and planted her hands behind her.

He pushed into her.

She moaned, loudly, in both pain and satisfaction. Their hips were flush now and she tipped her head back to look up at him. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and rocked against him. The sensation tore through her.

His stern face softened just a bit and he hissed.

"You seem brave enough to me."

Tightening his hold on her hips, he began to thrust into her. She had never felt so terribly _filled_ before and dug her nails into his shoulders. He chuckled and increased his pace as she began to cry out in helpless bursts.

He passed his tongue over the pad of his thumb and, pushing between their bodies, rubbed the digit against her sensitive nub. She tossed her head back at this, feeling a third climax building.

"Stay with me," he warned as his movements became more frantic. She threw herself at him then, pressing her chest against his and clinging helplessly to him, raking her nails across his back. She was losing control. As she wrapped her legs around his waist, desperate to get closer, he buried his face into the crook of her neck.

"Christ, Nellie!" he muttered against the sweat-slicked skin of her neck.

The endearment burned through her and she came, screaming, wailing. As she clutched at him, she shouted his name, once, pleadingly.

She felt him stiffen and call out, coming just as fiercely as she. He held her to him and bit roughly down on the sensitive cord of her shoulder.

She felt wild.

She was gasping for and air and, with detached amusement, realized David was slumped over her, equally exhausted. Eventually she unwound herself from around his body and he stepped away from her. He pulled his pants back up, and she slid off the table to retrieve her own. As she began looking for whatever happened to the rest of clothes, her eyes settled on the ruined tatters of her blouse. She picked it up to survey the damage only to find that it was irreparable.

Realization settled low in her stomach. She had nothing wear home. Feeling a brush on her shoulder, she turned to see David holding out his pullover sweater. She looked up unto his eyes; his stern, unreadable mask had fallen back into place. He took the ruined shirt from her as she reached for the sweater. She watched in amazement as he stuffed the thing into his pocket.

She pulled on the sweater and was immediately lightheaded with the scent of him. She wanted to bury her nose into the front of it and inhale deeply, but she thought with amusement that she should wait until she got home. She made to pull her hair up again, but he stopped her.

"Leave it." He rubbed a piece of it between his finger and thumb before stepping back.

"I'll stay with you until you get into the cab."

Nell wasn't sure what to do with his sudden reserved demeanor, but then, she hadn't really expected him to give her a kiss goodnight.

"Okay."

After they had made their way to the street, they stood in silence for a long time. Even in the heart of the city, at this time of morning it would be a wait before a cab came by.

When finally she climbed into the back of the car, she held back a grin as David reached across to pay the driver.

He leaned over her a second more and she fought the temptation to quickly kiss him.

"I'll see you again before the collection goes over, though probably not for long."

"Yes, of course," she answered, nodding.

"And again in London, at the opening. Are you going to London for that?"

Nell shook her head. "I don't know; I hadn't thought..."

He ran a finger slowly down the side of her neck.

"I'll be sure you do."

He stepped back then, and closed the cab door. She turned in her seat to look back at him as they drove away. He stood at the curb, watching her, until the cab turned the corner.

Nell settled back into the seat. She hoped Marie wasn't waiting up for her.

She didn't know how she would explain her sweater.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nell's one night encounter has repercussions, some that she didn't quite expect.

"I had an interesting talk with David earlier, Nell." 

Nell balked at Rita's words. It was several days after her late night visit from David Bowie and life had almost seemed normal again. She could almost convince herself that it hadn't actually happened, especially since the bruising on her tailbone had begun to fade.

David had spoken to Rita? Surely it was something to do with the upcoming exhibit. She was grateful to have the laptop in front of her, lest her panic show through on her face. 

She hunched farther over it, suddenly very interested in editing one of her latest entries. 

"Is everything alright?" Nell tried to sound noncommittal. Her typing slowed as she waited for Rita to answer. 

"Yes, of course. He just surprised me with a request."

Nell began to chew her lip. "Whatever it is I'm sure I can take care of it. We have time yet before the shipment deadline." 

Rita clucked her tongue. "You see, that's just it. He called requesting, or rather confirming, that you would accompany the collection to London." 

Her cheeks burned, and she hoped Rita wouldn't ask why. Nell was a horrible liar. She cleared her throat and, with fumbling fingers, continued to type. 

"I told him that I wouldn't dream of leaving you behind, not after all the work you've contributed." Rita moved to stare at Nell from over the edge of her computer. Nell kept her eyes averted, worrying her bottom lip with fervor. 

"I did think it strange," she continued, "that David would make such a request. He doesn't usually bother with these sort of... Details." 

Nell’s voice quaked when she answered. "I-- I'm sure he's just wanting to ensure the integrity of the-- er... I know the collection very well..." 

Rita snapped the computer closed; Nell whipped her hands out, though the screen still pinched the tips of her fingers. She looked up into the very stern face of her boss. Her guilt was plain on her; Nell knew it. 

"I might have known."

Nell looked away, panicked. What if she lost her job? She couldn't bear the thought. 

"Careful, there, Nell," the older woman warned, her fingers still splayed and pressed white-tipped into the back of the laptop. "David is a very fickle man. He is fond of pretty things and he is fond of making possessions of them, but he is mercurial in his wants." 

Shaking her head, Nell opened her mouth to deny the accusation, but Rita cut her short. 

"Don't. What you do is your business." Rita stood up and smoothed her skirt. "But know this. I won't tolerate any slipping on your part. I hired you because your work is good. Furthermore," Nell flinched at Rita's steadily rising voice, "if this were any other job, I would have fired you on the spot. Fortunately for you, working for David Bowie is no ordinary job." 

Nell slowly reopened the computer, mortification weighing heavily on her. 

"Don't disappoint me."

Rita made her way back up the stairs. As her footfalls faded, Nell flopped her head onto her arms, shaking.   
What now? 

\---

A few nights later, Nell was boiling pasta for a very late dinner. She hadn't had much of an appetite after Rita's scolding, and buttered boxed noodles was about all she felt she could stomach at the moment. Marie called to her from the living room. 

"Your phone! It's going off. You want me to get it for you?"

"No," she called back. She didn’t feel like chatting with her mother at the moment. "If it's important she'll leave a message." 

She spooned the pasta onto her plate and was grinding some pepper onto it when Marie yelled again. 

"It keeps going off, Nell. It's an unknown number."

"Hold on." She wiped her hands on her skirt before jogging into the living room. She picked up the phone just as it stopped vibrating. Four missed calls. Just as she was checking for a voice message, it went off again. She fumbled a bit in surprise and picked up. 

"This is Nell."

"You're not at work."

Nell blanched at the voice on the other end. She tried to keep her expression neutral. 

"Oh hi!... Susan..." She rattled off her past thesis advisor's name, at a total loss of who else she could possibly fake. 

"Where are you? I'm coming to get you."

"I'm doing well, will you hold on for just a moment?" She made a gesture to Marie, mouthed 'be right back' and fled to her room. 

"How did you get this number?" she hissed into the phone, locking the door behind her. 

"I've come down to the archive and you aren't here."

Nell’s heart was pounding. Why was he calling her? 

"Yes, I don't usually make a habit of being at the archive later than, I don't know, seven! You should have come down then if you needed something!"

He didn't appear to be listening. 

"Where are you?"

"I'm at my apartment," she whispered. 

"What address, Nell? I'm coming to get you."

He kept saying that! Her panic rose. What did he want? 

"No, just wait. I-- I'll come down. Just stay there."

"You have ten minutes or I'm coming to find you."

She quickly hung up the phone. This, she hadn't been expecting. She ran out into the front room, grabbing for her coat. 

"Everything alright?" Marie looked concerned. And curious. 

"Yeah," Nell panted as she twisted her hair around the pencil she pulled from her coat pocket. "Susan was just needing some old research I have for a lecture." 

“Where are you going?” 

“Oh...” Nell tucked a fallen piece of hair behind her ear. “I left the USB drive plugged in the computer at work.” She almost groaned. She was not good at lying. 

“I’ll be back.” She was already stepping through the door. “Don’t wait up.”

As Nell raced down the stairs, she pulled out her phone to check the time. It was after eleven. What on earth could the man need from her this late at night? A very vivid mental image of him biting her shoulder as he came inside her bubbled to the surface. She chewed the inside of her cheek and stuffed her phone into her pocket. At this point, it would just be faster to run the several blocks to the archive than wait around for a cab.

She was not a little irritated that she so willingly dashed out of her apartment to meet him. When had it come to this? He said jump and she ran to get a stick for him to measure the height. 

When they parted ways last, she had thought, if she did see him again, it would be under similar circumstances. She never thought the man would call her, would threaten to come find her! The sound of his insistence on the phone, however, warmed her. She bit back a grin as she checked the time, and began sprinting.

She was completely winded when she rounded the corner of the building housing the archive. Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

A text reading: “You’re late.”

She tapped in the code to the door and bustled through the small entry. Once inside, she slowed her pace and attempted to get her breathing under control. He didn’t appear to be on the first floor, so she made her way down to the basement. 

"What's the big emergency?" she called as she rounded the bend of the stairs. 

He was leaning against the worktable, leafing through her notes. She rushed over to him to attempt to snatch them out of his hands. He held them above his head.

“You have some very keen observations of my work in these.” He shook the pile of loose papers.

“Again,” she jumped, reaching again for the papers, “something you were never meant to see.” On her third attempt, she finally ripped the papers from his hand.

“Oh, but Nellie,” he grasped her elbow and began to rub his thumb against a particular spot along the inside of her arm, “those are my favorite things to see.”

She pulled her arm away. “Don’t call me that.”

He chuckled deep in his chest. "I do so enjoy when my little bird nips at my fingers." He clasped her elbow again. "But don't be petulant," he warned. 

My little bird. She shivered. Rita's words echoed in her mind. 'He is fond of pretty things and he is fond of making possessions of them.' 

“I-- I’m not your little bird.” She lifted her chin. “I’m not yours.”

David stepped closer to her, his familiar scent enveloping her. She had kept his pullover tucked beneath her pillow at night. She told herself it was so Marie wouldn’t find it, but the closer truth was that she enjoyed that her bed smelled like him. Another step. The man wasn’t overly tall, but his menacing look made him appear to tower over her.

“Aren’t you, though?” He brought his fingers to her neck and pressed into the fluttering pulse there. “Your heart is still racing from flying down here to meet me.” His fingers pressed harder, making her dizzy. “Or is it racing because, now, you’re here?”

She swallowed around the lump forming in her throat.

"You are mine. I think you are just frightened to be had." He slipped her coat from her shoulders and circled around behind her. He buried his nose in the hair twisted to the back of her head and inhaled. Deeply. 

Nell knotted her hands in the hem of her shirt. She was trembling. "But..." His fingers traced up her stiff arms and her breath caught. "What about... What about your wife?" 

The thought had been pulling at her since the moment she took off the sweater in the quiet of her apartment, had kept her awake for hours. He was married. She had slept with, no-- fucked, a married man. The worst of it was that she hadn't even stopped to consider this until after, while she was stripping off her clothes. His clothes. Nell was so used to over-thinking everything, to plans and schedules. She would have never let something like that slip through the cracks, not before. 

He didn’t even pause. 

"She did quite enjoy hearing about you." She could hear the smile in his voice as he rubbed his cheek against her hair. 

She whirled around. "You told her about... About that?" Her heart was hammering. What had he said? 

"I can bring you a note from teacher if it would make you more willing." His voice was blasé as he narrowed his eyes at her. 

Anger pitched in her, knocking hard against her throat. She swung a hand at him, not truly expecting to slap him, but furious at his condescension. 

He caught her wrist easily and brought her hand to his mouth, biting into the meat of her palm. She yelped in surprise and he soothed the inflamed skin with strokes of his thumb. 

"You are delightfully willful tonight, my girl."

He also bit the inside of her wrist and immediately nursed the hurt with brushes of his lips. As he strummed the tendons of her wrist with flicks of his tongue, her clenched fists relaxed and she let her fingertips lightly brush through the softness of his hair. His gaze was intense on her as his other hand reached to her hair. He pulled the pencil out of the knot of it and it tumbled heavily down her shoulders. He snapped the pencil in his hand and released her. 

The hard crack of the wood breaking caused her to jerk. She quickly drew her hand out of his hair.

"You'll wear your hair down, from now on."

She pursed her lips in irritation. 

"And why would I do that?"

He stepped to her again. 

"To please me." He tipped her chin up as he brought his mouth to hover just above hers. "You do want to please me, don't you?" 

She was confused. This had so quickly escalated out of control. What had started as an experiment in humiliation had suddenly turned to some twisted sort of game of exploiting Nell’s lack of power. One encounter, one reckless romp against a worktable and the man was telling her how to wear her hair. Most disquieting of all was the excitement his order evoked from her, and how much she did really desire to please him. 

"What do you want from me?" she whispered. 

He brushed his lips over hers. 

“I thought I made that painfully obvious last time.” He stroked his fingertips over the tips of her breasts. “Need I paint you a picture?”

“No, I-- you know what I mean. What--”

He cut her short. “What I want is very simple, and very singular.” He began undoing the buttons of her shirt. She shivered as he ran cold fingers down the naked expanse of her back. 

"I shan't call you to tell you I miss you; I'll call you because I want to feel myself within you. When we are together, I will want and need you desperately. But we won't be together unless I want to need you." He slipped the shirt from her shoulders and bent to lathe his tongue over the dip at the base of her neck.

"I find you... Compelling. And that's what you are going to get from me." He moved her hair behind her shoulders, barely grazing her flesh. 

"I will hurt your feelings, Nell." He scraped his teeth over the groove of her collarbone. She squirmed beneath him, knowing he was leaving marks on her skin. 

"But I promise to kiss them better." At that, he whispered a feather light kiss over her shoulder. Nell was trembling. She ached. 

But she paused. This idea he proposed, this moment to moment possession of her was something she didn't know how to digest. To be needed by this force of a man for any amount of time thrilled her. But would she be able to step away? Could she debase herself to be this purely carnal creature to suit the whims of this man that ignited her passion, and then live her life in the in between? She wasn't sure. She was willing to try, but she was afraid of losing herself. 

Perhaps this was something that could work. But only if she held at least some of the power. 

He was waiting for something. His cards were on the table, yet again, but he waited for her. Squaring her jaw, she nodded once. 

He kissed her then, holding her head with both hands. Her hands fell to the flat of his stomach and she moaned into the slow meld of lips and tongues. He smiled against her mouth. 

In one fluid movement, he dropped his hands to the backs of her thighs and hoisted her into his arms, hiking her sensible skirt up her thighs and about her hips. She wrapped her legs around his waist and, with one arm slung around his neck, she started clawing his shirt up his back. He turned and slammed her back into the wall, brutally pinning her, and tore his shirt over his head. His hair was rumpled and his strange eyes were wild as he pinned her wrists high above her on the cold wall. He ground his hips into her heat and her back arched. 

She hissed at the feeling of his hot chest pressed into her. To feel him flush against her, the friction of bare skin against her nipples, was overwhelmingly erotic. She groaned with startling arousal as he ground against her again. 

"Do you see?" he whispered hoarsely against the shell of her ear. "How much you delight in giving yourself to me?" The hand not holding her wrists aloft dropped to her center and rubbed against the thin material shielding her there. He tugged her underwear to the side and brushed a finger through her wet. "You give yourself away." 

He released her wrists to better focus his hands elsewhere, and Nell took advantage of his distraction. She loosed her legs from about his waist and dropped nimbly to the floor. Before he could protest, she had begun to undo the fly of his pants. When he reached to still her hands, she swatted him away and abruptly tugged down his trousers several inches. 

"Nell--" he warned before she took him into her mouth, silencing him. 

Slowly, very slowly, she slid her mouth down the length of him. She looked up to see him glowering down at her. She moved her tongue against the underside of him and his eyes fluttered shut. He slapped his hands hard against the wall and she hummed in satisfaction, slowly continuing her taking of him. He was making noises somewhere between groans and bursts of laughter, and Nell reveled in the sound. 

She could be his, but she would make sure that a piece of him belonged to her, as well. His satisfaction was tied to her, and she would enjoy that bit of power. 

"You-- you've made your point, little girl." His voice was strained and he slammed a fist against the wall as Nell creatively changed tactics with her tongue. "Now come back up here so I can make mine." 

She doubled her efforts then and he cried out. One of his hands dropped from bracing against the wall and tangled in her hair, alternating between trying to tug her away and pressing her to him. His grip tightened as he drew close.

“Nell!” he barked as she took more of him into her mouth than she had yet tried. She looked up again to watch him as he crested. His lips were pulled away from his teeth and his brow drawn. He was beautiful. 

When his breathing began to slow, she withdrew from him, still kneeling and still watching. 

All at once his eyes flew open and he dragged her to her feet with the hand he had still buried in her hair. He pushed her against the wall. He looked angry, his mouth pressed into a thin line. She didn't care. 

"You seem pleased," he muttered, his voice gruff. 

She quirked a smile. 

"Did you swallow?"

His crass question embarrassed her, but she dropped her bottom jaw to show him her empty mouth, even as her cheeks blushed with color. He hooked his thumb behind her bottom teeth and she closed her lips around the digit. His lips twitched in amusement as she softly sucked at him. 

"You continue to surprise me, Nell." He pulled his thumb from her mouth and zipped his pants. He walked back over to the worktable and picked up her discarded shirt. Rubbing the fabric between his fingers for a moment, he seemed to be considering something, then tossed it to her. 

“Come; let’s get some coffee.” 

She shrugged on her shirt. 

“But-- I thought you said...”

“I know what I said.” He tugged on his own shirt and ran his hands through his disheveled hair. “And now I want to have coffee with you.”

She gathered her things and felt at her hair. He stepped over to her and covered her hand with his. He stroked a few wayward pieces away from her hairline, and nodded. She dropped her hands and followed him silently up the stairs.

He wove quickly down the street and through more than one narrow alley in silence. Nell practically jogged to keep pace. They stopped outside a dimly-lit 24 hour cafe. It looked to be almost entirely deserted as David pushed through the front door and made a line for a table at the back. A waitress glanced in their direction, and after a small eyebrow raise at Nell’s presence, grabbed a coffee pot off a burner behind the counter and two mugs. 

She filled the cups and turned to Nell. 

"Cream?"

"No," she and David answered in unison. The waitress suppressed a smile before exiting to the kitchen. 

Looking around, Nell saw that the diner was actually deserted. She blew on her coffee, comfortable in the silence.

David shifted and slid a small box across the table. 

“I was going to give you this earlier.” He took a pull from his coffee. "It's... why I called you. It...it isn't payment for excellent head." 

She smiled at his words. He suddenly seemed nervous. "I would hope not." 

She took the lid off and peeked inside. 

"It's ivory, but it's very old, so don't give me any sort of hell about poaching."

She pulled the thing out of the box. It was a hair comb, and it instantly called to mind the combs given to Della hours after she had shorn her singular worldly possession of value. 

“For your damn hair.” He drank again. 

She turned it over in her hand, weighing what to say next. 

"I don't want to sound ungrateful..." she began.

"Then don't." He sat down his cup and leaned back in his chair. 

"I just... I'm not some sort of..." She didn't know what word to settle on. 

"My giving you a comb so maybe you will resist running your hair through with a pencil hardly makes you a kept woman, Nell."

Nell fingered prongs of the comb, considering. She pulled her hair away from her face and secured it. Her eyes met his. 

"It suits you."

She sipped her coffee and set down the cup. 

"Just this." She tapped her fingernail against the tabletop. "You've been very forthcoming with what you want, and I just want... This." 

He brought his fingers to his lips, thinking. She squared her jaw and maintained his steady gaze. It amazed her, sometimes, the boldness he drew out of her. Years ago, she had gotten a tattoo of his lyrics to remind her that she was able overcome walls that she built for herself. And now, under his influence, she began to scale those walls all over again. 

"As you like."

"Thank you." She fiddled with the lid of the box. 

The silence settled comfortably around them. 

After several long minutes, David cleared this throat. 

"So tell me, Nellie." With a small smile, she looked over to him. He smiled back. "What's your last name?"

She laughed. 

\---

When she stepped through the door of her apartment, it was after six. Eventually, the conversation came. Not easily, but it was steady and lasted for hours once they found a rhythm. Nell was shaking from the multiple cups of coffee and was grateful to have the day to recover. She dropped her keys into the bowl by the door and toed off her shoes. 

"Morning." Marie chirped from the living room. 

Nell spun around at her voice. "Marie! Hi! I didn't expect you to be up this early." 

"And I didn't expect your late night errand to keep you out all night." She looked over Nell shrewdly, and Nell resisted the impulse to straighten her clothes.

She shucked her coat and laid over the back of the couch. 

"Yes, well, I'm exhausted obviously." Nell avoided the topic. 

"Obviously." Marie stood in the doorway to the kitchen, awaiting an explanation that wasn't going to come. 

"Well..." Nell twisted a piece of her hair before abruptly dropping it, suddenly worried to draw attention to the comb. "I'm going to turn in." 

"Okay." Marie called, but she had already made her way back to her room. 

She thought of her earlier conversation with Rita, and the suspicious look Marie had leveled her. She pulled the comb from her hair and laid it on her small dresser. This was getting complicated. And something told her that this was only the beginning. 

As she flopped onto her bed, fully clothed, she breathed a sigh of relief for small comforts. Exhaustion weighed heavy on her and she had almost drifted off when her phone buzzed from the side table. 

The haze of almost-sleep bled from her as she read the text message. 

"Don't think chatting me up in a café excuses your impertinence. I'll just tie you down next time."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David surprises Nell, more than once.

“Look alive; David Bowie is here,” Marie muttered as she flew down the steps to the basement of the archive. 

Nell immediately began to stow her recent notes and tidy her work space. There was no way that man was going to get a look at those again. 

“Does he always drop in like this? This often?” Her heart was hammering as she stuffed the loose leaf papers into her computer bag and closed her laptop.

“No. Never. This is my third time laying eyes on the man, and I’ve been here five years.” Marie was rushing around the room as well, tidying and fussing.

Nell pulled the pencil from her hair, not wanting to see the look on David’s face if he saw. The ivory comb was sitting in her jewelry box at their apartment, and she wished she’d thought to keep it in her bag. She rumpled her hands in her hair but stopped abruptly when she felt Marie’s eyes on her.

“It has to be the London exhibition. He seems like a perfectionist,” Nell ventured.

Marie was still eyeing her. 

“We’ve done exhibits before unsupervised. We’re an archive; it’s what we do.” She was watching Nell carefully.

“Huh.” Nell tried to sound bored, despondent, anything to call Marie off. 

“Is there something else you need to see, David?” Rita’s voice reached the two girls before they did. “Everything is running smoothly, here.”

“Now Rita,” they rounded the corner into the basement. “Is it so terrible that I would want to drop in and see how you were fairing? We’re friends, aren’t we?” 

He was dressed in a dove grey suit with a steel colored tie and his hair was pleasantly dishevelled. Somehow, he managed to look boyish, even at his age. His eyes danced around the room and fell on Nell. He drank her in, a not-so-subtle grin crinkling his eyes.

“Quite.” Rita said, stiffly. Her eyes followed David’s and fell coldly on Nell.

Nell averted her eyes, not really knowing how she was going to act like David hadn’t seen her naked.

"Actually," David flapped his hand, seemingly waving off the fog of discomfort that was threatening to fill the room. "I'm on the way to a meeting. I just wanted to touch base on a few things." 

Rita brightened. "Of course." 

"I know the exhibit is mostly historical, archival, stage outfits and such," he began to weave about the space. "But I thought the collection was a bit lacking in the conceptual aspects. Ah... The art behind it." 

"I see." Rita snapped her fingers and Nell frantically pulled a legal pad and pen from her bag and handed them over. "You'd like to expand on the less public artifacts."

"Precisely." 

Nell opened the laptop and tapped through to the database. There wasn't much of his personal collection archived. 

"The things I think would be most interesting are of my personal store, Nell. You needn't try pull anything up."

She started at his use of her name, remembering one of the last times he invoked it. He always seemed to languorously stretch the last part of her monosyllabic name, as if taking pleasure in the press of his own tongue. It sounded carnal, especially now in the cold of the basement.

Rita clucked her tongue, considering the two, and Nell turned to straighten her bag from hastily pulling the pad out of it. 

"It'd be a challenge, certainly, to add to the archive on such short notice, but of course we will do whatever we can." Rita jotted some notes before laying the legal pad in the table. 

“Right. Good.” David had pulled his phone out of his pocket and was tapping about on the screen, only half-listening.

“Thanks, Rita, for it all.” He stuffed his phone back in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Got to run, unfortunately.”

Just then Nell’s phone buzzed from the table, the small sound loud in the cement-walled basement.

“Sorry!” She dashed to grab it. “Sorry,” she said again as she turned it from vibrate to silent.

“Might turn that off when you’re at work, eh?” David chuckled.

Her bottom lip stiffened as she looked over at him. He smiled, a wicked glint to his eye. She said nothing.

He held her gaze for a moment more before turning to Rita.

“I’ll be in touch with you. On the changes.”

The woman nodded. 

“I’ll walk you out.”

They continued to chat as they exited, leaving Nell and Marie alone. They watched in silence and the quiet continued for moments afterward.

"What's going on?" Marie lobbed the question baldly before Nell. 

"What do you mean?"

Marie’s eyes fell to Nell’s tightly grasped phone. 

“You know,” Marie gathered her things, preparing to follow Rita up the stairs. “You really are a horrible liar.”

\---

Nell left the archive early that day. Rita had stepped out shortly after David’s departure and Marie was crabby at best. With a half-hearted joke about getting an early start to her weekend, Nell left Marie and made the quick trek home. Once out on the street, she finally pulled her phone from her bag. There was a singular text message waiting for her.

“Tonight.” 

She shoved the phone back to the very bottom of her bag and set off at a trot to her apartment. She mulled over the different responses she could send back and finally settled on not sending anything at all. Satisfied at her decision, she marched up the few steps to her building. This weekend would be an excellent time to start that book she had bought from a street vendor the other day, she decided. Maybe she’d get a haircut or clean out her email inbox.

Anything to keep her away from David.

Marie came home shortly after Nell to find her settled into the armchair in the front room, already a few chapters into her book. She picked up the second half of Nell’s peanut butter and honey sandwich she had sitting on the small side table and took a mighty bite.

“Sorry about earlier,” she mumbled through the mouthful.

Nell nudged her cup of coffee towards Marie as she ran her finger down the page, searching for a good stopping point. Her friend picked up the cup and took a long draw. She ate another bite of the sandwich.

Nell looked up.

“It’s okay.” She wanted to say more, she wanted to confess the whole thing, but after the cold look Rita had given her today, she didn’t think she could stomach Marie’s judgement as well.

“You know you could tell me if something was wrong.” Marie picked off the crusts of the sandwich, handing it back down to Nell, who ate them in small, measured bites.

“I know.” She chewed thoughtfully, but didn’t say anything further.

“I’ve got a date tonight, so I’ve got to get ready.” Marie finished off the sandwich and threw back the rest of the coffee.

“Okay,” Nell said, avoiding her eyes. She liked Marie, a great deal. She thought of her as her friend, probably the only one she had in the city. But she didn’t know how to start that conversation, didn’t know what she would even talk about. 

‘So, I blew David Bowie the other night’ seemed a little...abrupt.

“Okay,” Marie parroted back. “Offer still stands. If you need to talk.”

“Thanks.” Nell smiled, a small thing. Marie retreated to her room and Nell reopened her book. She just stared at the pages.

\---

After Marie had left, Nell settled back into the chair with a fresh cup of coffee. She was determined to read this book, to ignore the text that still sat unanswered on her phone.

But her attention seemed to fluctuate towards it, no matter how she concentrated her focus.

She jumped as it buzzed against the wood of the table. Maybe it was Marie. Or her mother. She picked it up opening the text.

"Nell."

She put the phone back down and continued to stare at her book. The words ran together, but she wasn't giving in. Not yet. 

It buzzed again, longer this time. He was calling her.

She snapped the book shut and snatched the phone, fidgeting. Finally, she picked up. 

"Yes?"

"I've sent a car for you."

She blanched and sat up. 

"You've what?" She wet her suddenly dry lips. 

"It should be there soon."

“I haven’t told you where I live!” Her voice was shrill.

“And I haven’t asked.” His voice was calm and he didn’t elaborate. 

“You can’t come here,” she hissed into the phone. Her eyes darted around the room taking in the clutter.

“I said I was sending a car. I’m not in the car.”

She pressed her palm into her forehead.

“Promise me you won’t come here?” Her voice came in a whisper. She wasn’t sure why.

He paused for a long moment before answering. “I promise.”

Another thought occurred to her. 

“I don’t want to meet you down at the archive!” 

He laughed at the other end of the line.

“No?”

“No, David.” She bit her lip at how easily his name had rolled off her tongue. Better leave that line of thought alone. “I work there, it’s my place of business. I can’t just keep...” she looked over her shoulder, as if expecting someone to be listening in. “I can’t keep rutting against the worktables after hours.”

He laughed again.

“I agree. The car is to take you to down to the Village. I have a studio there.”

She took a few moments to process that. Not a hotel?

“Oh.”

“I’ll see you soon, Nell.” He disconnected the phone call.

She rushed off to her room to change. She would like, just once, for him to see her in something other than the structured clothes she wore at work. She settled on a soft cream colored shirt and low slung pants. The ivory comb went nicely with her top.

As she was considering applying a little make-up, her door intercom sounded. She grabbed her phone and bag and rushed out the door.

The car was expensive, but understated. She felt strange climbing in the backseat as the driver held open the door for her. Was this something he did often?

The drive didn’t last long, though it was long enough for Nell’s nerves to work themselves up into a nauseating cluster than sat heavily in the pit of her stomach. When they stopped, Nell couldn’t see much of the building and she didn’t know the city well enough yet to have any idea of the neighborhood.

She opened her own door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. That’s when she saw David. 

He was sitting on the stoop, still dressed in his suit from earlier. He was on the tail end of a cigarette and the sudden glow of the ember softly illuminated his face. He was watching her.

He flicked the cigarette into the gutter and stood. 

“Come.”

She walked up the steps towards him and he led her through the front door of the building. 

The lobby was modest and clean, a nice mixture of classic architecture and modern touches. It was nice, if a little small.

“The lift’s out of sorts,” he said as he started towards the stairwell to their right. 

She followed him silently up the stairs. This wasn't exactly the type of building she expected David to have a studio in. It was nice enough, quiet and clean, but it looked... Affordable. A man like David doesn't even have a grasp on how much money he has, it's just there, like the air he breathes. His "studio in The Village" should be exclusive and trendy. Not... Reasonable. 

Just as she was starting to get winded, he stepped out into the hallway. They weren't even at the top floor yet. He turned to her as he began unlocking the dead bolt to a door a little farther down. He raised a bemused eyebrow at her. 

"You continue to surprise me, David," she echoed his earlier words. 

He stayed silent and swung the door open. If she was surprised earlier, her reaction now was probably more akin to shock. 

"You actually meant studio."

The space was not large; a singular L-shaped room. The far wall was all windows with multiple heavy drapes hanging in varying degrees of drawn. And the place was covered in artistic refuse. The hardwood floor was caked in layers of spilled paint, several easels standing about with half-finished projects, or empty and leaned against the walls. The walls at one time were covered with white plaster, but now much of the raw brick peeked through. Drawn directly on the bits of plaster that remained, different sketches or splashes of paint were crowding for space, some as elementary as childhood crayon wall drawings and some painstakingly detailed and complete. Mobiles dangled from the exposed pipes that hung from the high ceiling and chased down the walls. Sculptures of wire and metal and craggy glass stood on cluttered tables. 

It was frantically filled and crowded, though the energy seemed to flow easily through the space. Full, busy, but not cramped. Not claustrophobic. Nell knew that in the morning, it would be filled with the most fantastic light. 

"This is amazing," she breathed. 

"You know," he walked more fully into the room. "That's is the first compliment you have paid me." 

Her lips twitched with a captive grin. 

"Don't get used to it."

She began a slow circuit of the room, in awe of the creation. Nell did not claim to know much about art beyond her few Art History classes. Her studies had focused more on collection archiving and maintenance rather than development and creation. But she knew enough to know that David was a stunningly talented artist outside of the recording studio as well. 

Of course. 

She stopped before what looked to be the start of a metalwork bust. The head was only half constructed, leaving an unsettling maw where the head connected to the neck. It was visceral and violent and empty and she couldn't help feeling terribly sad looking at it, even unfinished. 

"What do you think?" His voice sounded just behind her. 

She reached out and fingered a bit of the intricate solder marching bronzed designs over the crude cheek of the bust. 

"It's... Exceptional. It's-- it's hurting my feelings, if that makes any sense." 

He chuckled. 

"More than you know."

He closed his hand over her reaching fingers and turned his face into her hair. 

"I've been thinking of you. Of your mouth." His breath stirred her hair and she fought against the shiver that walked icy fingers up her spine.

"I've spent long hours going over our last encounter." He trailed teasing fingers up her arms, then back down. "Thinking of how I can repay you in kind." 

A swelling sensation started in her chest, combating with the tattoo her heart was tapping. 

"Did-- did you come up with anything?" Her voice came out a dry, husky sound. 

He shifted behind her, pressing into her back. 

"I have a few ideas."

He stepped back from her and she was met with the sudden cool of the room. 

"Walk over to that wall, where I can see you." 

She walked out into the only open space of the room to a naked expanse of hieroglyphed wall. She turned to face him. 

"Here?"

He remained behind the table across the room. His stance was comfortable and confident; he knew who he was inside this room and that excited her. Steepling his fingertips on the tabletop, he nodded. 

"Take off your clothes, Nell." His face darkened with purpose and he angled his chin down, scrutinizing her. "Slowly." 

She brought shaking hands to the hem of her shirt. It was not lost on her that he was taking charge, even from his distance. Before, he was the one to undress her, to take. Now he demanded she give by her own hand. She was anxious to comply. 

She slowly drew the shirt up, revealing her body to him in tortuous inches. She lost sight of him as she drew it over her head and focused on keeping the anxious panic that threatened tamed. Once free, she shuddered out a breath. He remained at this table. 

For once, she wore a bra in his presence, and she was glad for another coil in her unraveling. It was a minimal couple of triangles of lace and she unhooked it easily. It traveled slowly down her arms and she refocused her gaze on David. 

His lips were slightly parted and his eyes seemed to be traveling to all the destinations his hands were not. 

She hooked a thumb into the waistband of her pants and dragged one side slowly down, giving a glimpse of her slightly jutting hip bone. He eyes followed her movement and narrowed. 

"Perhaps not quite so slow."

Catching her cheek in her teeth, she pulled the pants the rest of the way down her legs and kicked them a short distance away. She stood, just in her underwear and goose flesh pebbled her skin. The room was uncomfortably cool, though it was more than the temperature that chilled her. 

"Those too, Nell."

She rid herself of them, tossing them to join her other clothes and crossed her arms over her chest. At his look, she dropped her arms. 

He rounded the corner of the table, leisurely making his way to her. He paused momentarily, absently grabbing a stick of charcoal from the chaos of the table and, after taking a long look at her, drew a singular, swooping line along one of the pieces of paper that littered the place. 

"What's that?" Nell was fighting the instinct to cover herself again and his intense observations of her only heightened the need. 

He laid the charcoal on the table, wiping his fingers on a scrap of balled-up cloth. 

"The curve of your waist into the swell of your hip," he said, simply. 

She did sling an arm about her naked waist at that. 

He began towards her again, taking time in walking. Placing a foot fully on the floor before taking another predatory step. He reached up and loosened his tie, all the while searing her with his stare. 

"If I remember, I made you a promise when I left you last." 

She thought back to his text message, and the disquieting sleep afterwards that she couldn't quite give herself to completely. 

"It read more like a threat, to me." Her voice felt so small in this unfamiliar space. He knew this world and knew it displaced her to have her in it. 

He continued his slow-stepping towards her, and lifted the tie from around his neck. 

"Frightened, little bird?"

Terrified. 

"Give me your hands." He was so near her now. She felt incredibly diminutive in her nudity as he towered over her in his dove grey suit. Pressing her wrists together, she held them out in front of her. Using the tie, he lashed her wrists together, tight enough to bite into her skin. Wrapping the remainder around his hand, he gave a sharp, experimental tug. 

She stumbled forward a half step, still bound. 

He flashed his teeth in a satisfied smirk. The tie still wrapped about his hand, he reached above to the wall behind her. Her arms and back stretched and she threw her head back to follow his trajectory. Her heartbeat faltered as the pipe came into view. 

He secured her to the exposed plumbing, stretching a bit to reach. She was almost fully extended, just before the point of pain. The grit of the wall bit into her back and was unforgivingly cold. She was able to ease the discomfort by raising up fractionally onto the balls of her feet, but she was completely helpless. 

"Yes, that will do quite nicely." He brushed a finger along the under curve of her left breast and she could not contain the small whimper that tumbled from her. 

He backed away from her then, raking the hot coals of his gaze down the line of her body. He shucked his suit jacket and began rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt. 

"You're exquisite." His statement was simple. Stark against the still of the room. 

That's the first compliment he had paid her, as well, though she didn't feel the gumption to say so out loud. 

"I've been so looking forward to this, having you so... Indisposed." He rucked his sleeves up past his elbows. "Now, what to do with you?"

Nell was indeed frightened. It was thrilling to be under his control, but she didn't think she would enjoy him striking her, or worse. 

As if answering her unspoken misgivings, he ran a hand through his hair before continuing. 

"I don't fancy smacking you, or any sort of similar corporal punishment." If her stretched body would allow, she would have breathed a sigh of relief. "I do think I can find better means to make you squirm." 

The rhythm of her heart ratcheted up to a tumultuous pace and she rubbed her thighs together, feeling an insistent ache begin to build. 

He walked around the corner of the room and she heard the sound of running water. When he returned, his hands were filled with a chipped coffee mug and a paintbrush, a strip of raw muslin slung over his shoulder. He set the mug on the floor at her feet, dropping the brush into it. He plucked the muslin from his shoulder and stepped up to her. 

"Do you trust me, love?"

She ran her tongue along her bottom lip before answering. 

"Not really."

He laughed at that. 

"Good girl." He lifted the muslin up to her eyes and knotted it at the back of her head. The fabric was thin, so the light of the room still reached her eyes, but she was effectively blinded. 

Immediately her ears perked for clues as to what he had planned. She heard the paint brush clink against the the sides of the mug and she held her breath, straining to hear. 

Suddenly, a few drops of icy water dropped into the hollow of her collarbone. The shock of the cold choked a sputter from her. 

She heard the low hum of his satisfaction at her reaction.

"So sensitive."

He dipped the brush again and Nell tried to relax into whatever was to follow, but she couldn't dull the hypersensitivity of her skin. 

He ran the cold, soft bristles of the brush down her sternum and she arched into the slice of it. Her voice cracked as she half laughed at the his tantalizing torture. 

Another dip to refresh the cold of the brush and she bit into her lip, not quite smothering the squeal as he painted water over a nipple. 

She thought that eventually she would settle into the sensation of the random, silent caresses, but quite the opposite proved to be true. Her body roiled with the slow burn of undulating awareness and her cries of distress soon turned to a broken keening. When he finally swiped the brush through the hot damp building at the apex of her thighs, her knees buckled and she grabbed at the tie binding her wrists, desperate for support. 

The heat of his hands found her then and she moaned. Her arousal had reached a fever pitch and she pressed herself into his hands the best she could manage. He raked his fingertips down her ribs and she braced herself against the wall, feeling the brick scraping her shoulder blades. He nuzzled his nose into her navel and hiked her right leg over his shoulder. 

She did scream when he set his mouth to her. Her body shuddered with pent up fire and she thrashed against him. She was so close, so wound up, that only a few passes of his lips and tongue had her crashing over the edge. 

Her voice echoed off the walls of the place as she bucked against him, consumed by her pummeling orgasm. She was still shaking when she felt him stand and release the tie holding her up. She collapsed boneless into his body as he gathered her to him and into his arms. He carried her across the room to the area tucked around the corner. She felt the support of a lumpy mattress covered by sheets made soft and nubby from too many washes as he laid her down. He gently removed the muslin from her eyes and she looked heavy lidded up at him as he undressed,

She was able to clear her mind enough to slur, “Wait, I have--” before he pulled a foil packet from his discarded suit trousers. She nodded quickly, instantly relieved. She was willing to let her birth control cover the first frantic encounter, but they were both far too old to be so reckless a second time. 

She lifted her hands to him, eager to pull him atop her, to feel the full weight of him for the first time. He fitted so well between her thighs and she almost purred as he settled into her. She was perhaps beyond a second climax, but the closeness of his body, his scents and textures and unexpected gentleness was an entirely pleasurable experience within itself. She drew her fingernails up his back and tangled her fingers into his hair. She could tell that he was close, and she was surprised to find herself joining him. As his breathing became ragged, he startled her by gripping her firmly about the waist and swinging her on top of him. 

He buried his hands in her hair and she splayed her fingers on his chest as she rocked them both into a near simultaneous release. She so loved watching his face as he lost control, the emotions that danced through his strange eyes. He pulled at her hair and the comb that had somehow managed to stay with her through the events so far tumbled to the mattress and bounced the floor. She fell, too, laid upon his chest, utterly spent.

She felt deliciously tired, scooped out and refilled then scooped out all over again. After a time she became aware of his fingers trailing softly up and down the length of her spine and the vibration of his chest as he hummed a quiet verse from Don Quixote.

Little bird, little bird... 

“Convenient that you have a bed here,’ she murmured against his skin. “Is this where you steal away all your conquests?” She laughed lightly.

Nell felt and heard his heartbeat falter. 

“I’ve never brought anyone here before.”

His fingers stilled and pressed into her back and he seemed to be awaiting her response to his admission. The moment became strangely intimate, suddenly. More intimate than the moments previous. The comforting slide of his fingers over her heated skin, the rhythm of his breathing, was lulling her. 

"Not anyone?" It seemed too unlikely. 

"I-- no."

She suddenly felt compelled to tuck herself into his side, fitting into the crooks of his body and finding sleep with him. She thought of the fantastic artist’s light streaming through the windows in the morning and sharing coffee and breakfast. The thoughts came fast and in a jumble.

They terrified her.

She shifted. “I should go.” 

He let out a long gust of air. “Yes, you should.”

Her muscles and joints were stiff as she climbed off of him. She suddenly felt raw and the comfort she had found in his arms tasted sickly sweet at the back of her tongue. She dressed quickly and clumsily, suddenly feeling as though the energy of the room was indeed too cramped. She needed air, large, cold gulps of it. 

Looking up, she saw that he still lay on the small mattress, gloriously naked.

“You could stay, you know.”

She tugged on her shoes, her panic, fight or flight instincts rising.

“You and I both know that isn’t a good idea,” she muttered at the floor.

His face was impassive, unreadable. She grabbed her purse and phone and hurried back to the bedside. 

“I--” she was drawing a blank on parting words. She was absolutely going to lose it if she didn’t get out of the studio, and quickly. She brushed her lips briefly over his, giving neither of them time to even close their eyes.

“I’ll take a cab.”

She left, flying down the stairs. Tears pricked at her eyes and she didn’t care to think on why. In the brisk night, she only had to wait a few tense moments for a taxi to turn the corner. What if he came after her?

Once the car started moving, she finally let the tears fall. She curled her fingers around the roots of her hair and tugged, a stress relief gesture she had employed many times before. It was then she realized the comb was still laying on the floor next to the cot. She couldn’t think on that, not right now. She couldn’t think about anything, not yet. 

As a preventative measure, she turned off her phone and settled back into the seat, wanting nothing more than to be in her own bed. She paid the fare with her emergency credit card and rushed up the stairs to the apartment. She breathed in relief as she saw Marie hadn’t made it home yet. Perhaps she had made the easier decision to stay wherever she was.

Nell shook the thought from her head and flung herself into her bed. 

This would all look better in the morning, she thought. She’d wake up to a sexy text from David and the world would keep on turning. 

She shoved a pillow over her head and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to dream the lie into reality.


	4. Chapter 4

Nell slept late the next morning. The blankets and pillows littered themselves around her bed, as she had thrashed around most of the night, searching for some kind of comfort. The only thing that seemed to settle her was the pullover sweater she still kept tucked under her pillow. It was the only thing that remained on the bed. When she eventually turned over to check her phone, she saw that she still had it turned off, and decided to keep it powered down for a little while more.

She pressed her palms into her eyes, until sparkling, mottled burgundy splotches bloomed in her lidded vision. 

He had asked her to stay. In his way, of course. He would never ask for anything, not outright. But he had offered her a night, rather than an encounter. Comfort, rather than urgency. 

And she had been tempted.

He had warned her of his cruelty, of his dispassionate tendencies. Rita had warned her that he would soon lose interest, that this was something that could only end badly. Who had thought to warn her of his brief flashes of vulnerability? 

The memory of the softness of his voice and the stroke of his fingers as he admitted she was the only one he’d brought to his studio was cloying and barbed and was far more disquieting than his disinterest. 

Perhaps she was making too much of it, she thought. He only told her she could stay. They could have fit another round or two in before the morning; that might have been his motivation. 

She groaned, knowing the debacle would likely remain a mystery. Whatever feeble agreement they had come to at the beginning really didn’t allow for arduous discussions of the dynamic of the relationship.

At the thought of relationship, Nell’s mind went blank. There was no relationship. He was a man that came to her one night with a mind to fuck her and she was a girl with a mind to let him. She was overthinking it and she needed to stop.

She turned her phone on and immediately it flashed with missed messages from David.

“Stop it, Nell.” the first one read. She almost smiled at that-- his tendency to finish her thoughts. She read on. 

“Are you awake?”

“Answer me, Nell.”

“Espresso or drip?”

The last message was a surprise. Just as the implications of it started to settle low in her belly, the door intercom sounded. Nell jumped and immediately dashed out of her bedroom, grabbing the first thing her hands fell on to cover her pajama tank top and pulling it over her head. In the front room, she saw Marie crossing the floor towards the door.

“Marie!” Nell hissed. Her friend stopped mid-step.

“Nell?” Her confused look danced between the door and back to her. “Are you alright?”

“Marie.” Nell’s voice was a squeak. “I will pay you a hundred dollars to stay in your room for the next fifteen minutes.”

The intercom buzzed again.

Marie narrowed her eyes at Nell and made her way to the call button.

“Marie!” Nell was frozen in place and could only watch, stricken, as Marie answered. 

“Who is it?” Marie asked, her eyes still on Nell.

“It’s David.” 

What could only be the world's greatest self-satisfied smile crawled from one corner of Marie’s mouth to the other. She pressed the door release. 

"Come on up." 

Nell was in a panic. 

"Why did you do that?" She finally regained her ability to move and raced to the intercom, though there was nothing to be done about it now.   
"Oh, Nell. What have you done?" Marie was smiling broadly now, her arms crossed over her chest. 

Nell spun around, eyes darting about the room. 

"Two hundred dollars, Marie. Just hang out in your room and I'll... God, I don't know, I'll do your laundry for a week. A month!"

Marie laughed, slowly walking to coffee table to help Nell in her now frantic tidying of the space. 

"You practically do my laundry, anyway." She straightened the stack of books Nell had knocked over in her haste. "And you are deranged if you think I'm not about to stay right where I am." 

Nell groaned. 

"You might want to comb your hair," Marie said, her eyes twinkling. 

Just as Nell reached to her hair, the knock she had been dreading rattled the door. 

"Coming!” Marie trilled. Nell thought she could throttle her for enjoying this so much. 

Marie smoothed her hair and threw a look over shoulder to Nell before swinging the door open. 

He looked casually handsome in blue jeans and an asymmetrical hooded sweatshirt. Nell hated that. He was toting a drink carrier and wore sunglasses. 

"Ah, Marie, good." He greeted, brushing a kiss over her cheek. "This vanilla latte is for you." 

"Thanks, David Bowie," she purred as she took the indicated drink from the carrier. 

Nell wondered idly if Marie was ever going to stop smiling at her like that. Marie silently answered with an exaggerated eyebrow waggle. 

"And you never answered whether you prefer American or Italian, so I got you French pressed." He handed the cup to a silent Nell, and reached to remove his sunglasses. "Black." 

She ignored the impulse to thank him and hurtled on to the next thought that came to her. 

"You promised you would never come here."

"Good morning to you, too." He was smiling, but Nell could sense the agitation behind his softly curved mouth. 

"You left so suddenly last night, you forgot this by the bed." He held out her comb. He was daring her, saying these things in front of her roommate. His last word fell heavily in the room and Nell knew he had not idly mentioned it. Nell was battling the sensation of the bottom of her stomach dropping out and snatched the thing from his hand. Marie made a strangled, snorting sound from behind them. 

"Coffee's hot," she offered, lamely. 

"Come on." Nell dragged him through the doorway to the kitchen. She knew Marie would still be listening intently, but at least she wouldn't have to see her. 

Once inside the kitchen, Nell was at loss of what to do or say. The room seemed impossibly small with him in it and his proximity was irritating. He stood there, watching her, not a single indication of his intentions revealed. He obviously wanted this to be as difficult as possible. 

She turned away and pulled open the refrigerator. 

"Are you hungry?" She began pulling different items out from the shelves, seemingly at random. Eggs, and butter, and a lemon. A moment of consideration, and then a salad spinner half filled with spinach. 

She twirled to the cabinet behind David and tugged it open, forcing him to shuffle a bit to the side. A package of English muffins and a bottle of vinegar joined the assembled ingredients. She turned to the stove and lit a burner before clattering a saucepan filled with a few inches of water into place over it. 

They both remained silent as Nell whirled around the kitchen. She began separating egg yolks and melting butter before David spoke up. 

"You have to say something, Nellie."

She began pressing and rolling the lemon across the counter and reached for a knife the slice it in half. 

"You always say so little when we are together."

She began whisking the egg yolks, still silent. 

"That's not true, I suppose," he added. He leaned against the counter and watched as she lightly squeezed a few drops of lemon juice into the egg yolks. "You were quite talkative that second night." 

She could feel his eyes boring into her, but she kept to the task at hand. 

"At the café?" he ventured. 

Placing the cracked china bowl in the mouth of the saucepan, she continued whisking the yolks, slowly heating them. David nudged the cup of coffee she had left forgotten on the counter towards her and their eyes connected. 

She thought back to the night at the café. 

_"So tell me, Nellie." Her lips quirked at the increasingly maddening endearment. "What's your last name?"_

_She laughed helplessly. Had that really not come up before? She supposed there hadn't been much conversation, just charged reactions and sultry promises. David seemed to do most of the talking; though he very obviously had a way with words, so she had let him._

_"Majewski."_

_"You're Polish?" He seemed somehow surprised._

_"My grandfather was. And--" she pressed a hand into the table at David’s reaction. "--before you ask, no, Nell isn't short for some horribly long and interesting Polish name. It's just Nell."_

_"Just Nell." He seemed to enjoy that._

_"Yes. I'm pretty boring, actually. I've been to Poland once, when I was ten; Warszawa. Calling it Warszawa is about as Polish as I get."_

_They lapsed into silence again. Nell didn't know how to keep conversation flowing even when talking to perfectly ordinary people. It didn't help that he had been the focus of her research for some long weeks and she felt she had an unfair advantage._

_She finished her cup of coffee instead._

_"Tell me something," he offered after a time._

_"What do you want to know?" she asked._

_The waitress came by then, filling their coffee cups. Nell thanked her, but David kept his attention keen on the girl sitting across the table._

_"I want to know something... That you don't want to tell me."_

_She ran a fingernail along the rim of her coffee cup._

_“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me," she said._

_Nell thought. What a strange request, to tell him something she didn’t want him to know . At first, it was impossible to think of anything. What kind of person keeps a mental Rolodex of secrets never to be revealed? And then, suddenly, she could think of nothing but the silly, girlish, horribly under-traveled things about her that she hoped to forever keep from him. She stalled._

_“Isn’t basking in the humiliation of my idolizing tattoo enough for you?”_

_He glanced at her arm._

_“No.”_

_She sighed and settled on the embarrassment foremost in her mind._

_“I know every word to your Scary Monsters album.”_

_He tapped his fingers against the table, then shook his head._

_“So do I. That’s boring.” He lightly kicked at her under the table. “You can think of something better than that.”_

_She kicked back at him._

_“I read romance novels. Avidly,” she said. She couldn’t believe she was getting defensive about her embarrassing secrets._

_He huffed a laugh at that._

_“Closer. But you’re still holding back. You aren’t going to convince me so easily that you are not interesting.”_

_"Fine." She took a long drink from her cup, scalding her mouth. "You scare me."_

_The smile dropped from his face._

_"That's better." He reached across the table and tipped her cup towards him. He held it in the air, signaling the waitress. After her cup was filled again, David steepled his fingers against his lips._

_"Go on."_

_She chewed the inside of her cheek before continuing._

_"I don't make a habit of sleeping with strange men I've just met."_

_David opened his mouth to reply and she held up a hand to stop him._

_"I know every girl who sleeps with a strange man she's just met says that, but it's true." She laid her hand back onto the table, staring intently at some symbol that had been carved into the surface. "The thing that scares me is... I enjoyed it. You--"_

_She glanced up to his face and was flummoxed by the severity of his expression. She looked down again._

_"You make me feel things and... Want things I've not felt or wanted before."_

_She took a more cautious sip of her coffee and dared a glance up at him again, over the rim._

_"So that's the one thing I didn't want you to know. How you... Affect me."_

_Instantly, she regretted so impulsively informing him just how strong his upper hand was. Had she offered up her last ounce of control?_

_"See?" His answering smile was feral. "Not so hard."_

_She flapped her hand at him, determined to call him off. She was fighting the impulse to run from the restaurant, or to haul him against her and kiss that look of achievement off his face._

_"Now you. Tell me something you don't want me to know, either." She settled back in her chair, trying to emulate his self-secure posture._

_He waffled for a moment, seeming to consider whether to offer up his own admission or simply refuse. Nell knew he was capable of either._

_"Fair enough." He dipped a finger into his coffee and drew wet designs over the table._

_"I'm glad I didn't know you in the seventies." He dipped his finger again, and watched drips of coffee collect on the worn smooth wood of the table. "I was a crazy fuck back then. A girl like you? I would have eaten you alive."_

_She coughed."I hate to tell you this, but half my job is knowing what you were like in the seventies. I'm afraid that's not as much a revelation as you might have hoped."_

_He flicked drops of coffee at her._

_"The thing I don't want you to know is this: I may have gone soft in my old age, or at least, that's what people choose to believe. But Nellie," leaning forward, he reached over and roughly tugged at her knee, "I still desperately want to eat you alive."  
_

She whisked in the remainder of the lemon's juice, having added in the melted butter somewhat mindlessly. She dipped her finger in the sauce, sprinkled in some salt and cayenne pepper then held a spoonful out to David.

He took a moment to watch her, then ducked to taste it. He licked his lips thoughtfully, then nodded.

Nell began heating fresh water.

“You’ve warned me about all the wrong things,” she said finally. She added a splash of vinegar to the water.

“What’s that?” David said, belatedly. She looked over to see that he had started thumbing through a book she had left on the counter and wasn’t at all listening. She snatched it from his hands and lobbed it across the small room.

“You weren’t lying about the romance novels.” He laughed.

She turned from him and cracked an egg into a juice glass 

“Be useful and slice two of those muffins for me-- then pop them in the toaster.” Nell grabbed a spoon and slowly poured an egg into the hot water, spooning the egg whites as she poured.

“What did you say, Nell? Earlier.” He leaned over her as he placed the sliced muffins into the toaster. Her brow was furrowed as she concentrated on not ruining her egg and he stayed uncomfortably close, though the muffins were no longer in his hands. 

“I said, ‘You warned me about all the wrong things.’” She scooped out the egg into a small bowl and started on another. Taking a moment to align her thoughts, he shifted even closer to her. She could smell his familiar musk, of soap and cigarettes and something she didn't have a name for except "David." 

“You warned me that you would hurt my feelings, that--” He’d swept her hair over her shoulder, his fingers dragging languidly across her back. He began nuzzling at the now exposed slope of her neck. 

She scooped the second egg out of the water and whirled on him.  
“You weren’t supposed to ask me to stay!” 

The playful softness around his lips and eyes faltered as he searched her face. 

"Why are you upset?" He wrapped a stray sprig of her hair around a finger and pulled. "Because I was being kind?" 

She swatted his hand away. "Yes, actually." 

She pulled the muffins from the toaster before plating them and tore some of the spinach into more manageable pieces to place on top. She slid the eggs into place over that before spooning the sauce not so delicately to finish. 

"Do you want me to cut the other half of your muffin into soldiers?" she asked, not looking at him. 

"Nell."

She grabbed the muffin half and began slicing, although her hands were shaking. 

_"Nell."_

She put the pieces of muffin back on the plate and held it out to David. He reached over the plate and tipped her chin up. She met his stare hesitantly. 

"I wasn't supposed to ask you to stay, no, but you weren't supposed to be so--" He ran his hand through his hair. When he turned his attention back to her, his eyes were tumultuous, the intensity of his frustration choking her. The plate in her hand rattled. 

"You incapacitated me using only your mouth." 

He took the plate from her hands and set it loudly on the counter. 

"Without half thinking, you make bleeding eggs Benedict just to keep from talking to me!" He was near shouting now. 

"Eggs Florentine." She corrected softly. "I didn’t have any ham." 

He crowded her against the counter, pounding fists against the Formica surface. "When I came for you the first night," he hissed, "I came expecting to fuck some scared, star-struck girl with a 'Heroes' tattoo. It's this sick thing we celebrities enjoy, having terrified young things quivering beneath us." He pushed his hips into her, and she winced when the counter bit fiercely into her spine. "But then-- then you wrapped your body around me and fucked me back."

She pressed her lips together to try to settle the trembling that threatened there. Breathing slowly through her nose, she answered. 

"Don't get too impressed by the eggs. I threw a brunch bridal shower for a girl back home. It's about all I know how to make." His face softened fractionally. "You can ask Marie; I put Hollandaise on just about everything." 

"True story." Marie chirped from the living room. Nell winced. 

The anger that had bloomed on his face was slowly wilting, but still he pinned her. 

“I wanted you to stay.” His voice was quiet now. He wanted only her to hear this.

She wet her lips.

“But-- but what about...”

“The press?” he finished for her. “My wife?”

She felt the stick of needles in her eyes as they grew wet with tears, but she gritted her teeth and forced her expression calculatingly neutral. She nodded.

“You may have noticed that I am quite adept at keeping my private life private. I wouldn't be so stupid as to let something as inconsequential as this out.” One hand moved from its bracing position on the countertop and pressed into her back, his fingers easily finding a home in the dips between her ribs. Her breathing was coming in stuttering puffs. _Inconsequential._

“And as for this arrangement I have with Iman...”

The mention of her name drew a pained grimace from Nell. The familiarity of it coiled serpentine and heavy in her gut and she felt sick.

“It is nothing new.” He sneered at her then. “I’m not exactly known for my fidelity, least of all to a music genre.”

He sounded mean; he looked mean. Nell was dizzy from his dips and aboutfaces. One moment he was crooning in her ear his desire for her company, the next he was mocking her, tearing her to pieces for her stupidity.

“I can’t,” she said finally. “Rita warned me--”

“Rita?” His look was that of incredulous anger. “Did you--”

“Of course not!” She shoved at him, tired of being accused by this force of a man. “You aren’t exactly known for your subtlety either, David. She knew.”

He stepped away from her.

“I just can’t," she repeated. 

He raised his hands as if to grab her then squeezed them into tight, angry fists. 

“I’ll warn you about one more thing, little bird.” 

The tears that stung her eyes were falling now and she furiously scrubbed them away.

“I will stop; I will leave you. I want you, Nellie. But I will not beg.”

She wanted to be mean back at him. She wanted to make him feel stupid and hurt and regret he ever showed her vulnerability. 

“I don’t want you.” It was a lie, and her voice warbled, but she didn’t care. She wanted to mean it.

“Don’t lie to me.” He stepped closer to her, his voice low and dangerous.

“Why not?” Her voice came out sharp and slicing. “Who are you to me? Nobody; just some old English bloke I let fuck me a few times.”

The words crashed into the space between them, shattering and splintering the air of the kitchen. She was shocked at herself, at the genuine look of hurt on his face. Her hands flew to her mouth, finding it wet with tears.

“I--” She had no idea what to say.

A pointed, singular bark of a laugh silenced her.

“No. Don't." He rubbed at his jaw, as if she had slapped him. "I’ll just go.”

He glared at her for a moment longer before striding from the kitchen. Her fingers were still pressed into her lips as the front door slammed. She jumped.

Marie appeared around the doorway and rushed to her, flinging her arms around Nell.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

Nell was still shocked into silence, swaying in her friend’s arms. 

A single sob shook her and she slapped the backs of her hands at her face, wanting to beat the tears from her cheeks. 

"Nell, Nell." Marie grabbed her upper arms and softly shook her. "Stop that." 

Nell curled her lips into her mouth and nodded her head. She had to calm down. This is what she wanted, right? She wanted him to leave her alone, to stop confusing her. Didn't she? Her thoughts wouldn't settle. 

"Did you..." Marie searched her face, wiping some fallen hair away that was sticking in the wet of her tears. "Did you just break up with David Bowie?" 

Nell laughed a little, but it threatened to turn to crying, so she huffed the sound back through her teeth. 

"I think so." She pushed her hair away from her face and made to grab at the abandoned comb to hold it back. Her reaching hand closed and she instead reached for a chopstick sticking out of a jar of utensils. She wrapped her hair around it and felt a twinge of guilt as she stabbed it back through the knot of it. 

"Do you want some eggs?" Nell offered feebly. "They're probably cold." 

Marie smiled sadly. 

"Let's throw them out and order pizza instead."

Nell nodded. 

"Yeah, okay."

As Marie scraped the ruined breakfast into the small trash can, Nell began to put away the scattered ingredients. She pulled down her sleeve to wipe up a small pool of sloshed water and almost choked. It was then that she realized that, through the entirety of the morning's tumult, she had been wearing David’s sweater. 

"Let's open a bottle of wine, too." Nell said as an afterthought. 

Marie smirked, but nodded.


	5. Chapter 5

Nell had forgotten how quiet her life used to be. Growing up with a name like hers, she had become accustomed to a certain amount of peace. People have very specific expectations of an unassumingly pretty girl named Nell, and she had always been happy to live up to those expectations. She did well in school, she made friends with teachers rather than students, and she worked very hard. She was elected treasurer to school clubs, never president, and nice boys asked her to school dances, but not to parties. 

At the start of college, she had a short-lived bout of rebellion, though it lasted long enough for her to mark her newfound assertiveness along the inside bend of her right arm. 

Her mother had cried the first time she saw Nell’s tattoo. 

"You've always had such lovely skin," she'd said. "Did you have to get it on your arm, Nell?" 

Eventually her mother grew to accept it, if not appreciate the affirmation.

"And you've always looked nice in cardigans," she'd joke. 

Nell never regretted inking bravery permanently on her lovely skin, until its original creator became a very real presence in her life. And then, a very real absence. Even then, the feeling wasn't quite regret, but rather a yearning for the escape she would likely never find. David was always, quite literally, within arm's reach. 

So, as the days grew warmer, her sleeves grew longer, and she forced herself into a state of constant motion and polite detachment. Her life had become quiet, once again. She came to work early, she left work late, and she almost never picked up her phone. It would spend days uncharged on her side table, collecting worried voicemails from her mother. He never called or sent her messages, but she didn't quite trust herself to reciprocate. Better to eliminate the temptation altogether. 

The date of the shipment to London was quickly approaching and Nell's coping mechanism, her unyielding work ethic, had ensured that the day would come and go smoothly. She wanted to fly out with it, though Rita had laughed at that and reassured her it wouldn't be necessary. The host museum was perfectly capable of receiving an outside collection, after all. They would fly over the following week to assist with any last minute issues and, of course, to celebrate the opening. 

Nell had outdone all expectations even she had of the preparations, going so far as to include not only packing lists of all the items, but detailed notes along with multiple spreadsheets with important information about each individual piece. Hard and digital copies were included of all these, with duplicates in a separate shipment in case of emergency. Rita was suitably impressed with Nell's attention to detail, though she didn't say so until the day before the collection was due to be picked up. 

"I have to say, Nell," Rita mused as they all were gathering their things to leave for the day, "this is quite more than I expected from a girl straight from school." 

Nell tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, uncomfortable with the praise. 

Rita shook her head. "This is quite more than I expected, period-- no matter your professional experience." 

"Thank you, Rita." Nell was relieved to hear her boss's approval, as she had felt like such a dismal disappointment in the weeks after she had started her affair with David. Even in the weeks after their violent end, Nell felt as if she had only gone on to prove Rita right, and therefore perpetuate the feeling of total inadequacy. 

“No thanks needed,” Rita said. “Your work speaks for itself. I’m merely making an observation.” Her words were clipped and her tone cold, but this was something Nell had grown used to. Rita had always been stalwart in her professionalism, but she had lost the soft edge of kindness after discovering Nell’s indiscretions. Nell supposed she deserved nothing less; she was lucky to still have her job.

They began their way up the stairs and Marie cut the tension by chatting about the dress she thought she might wear to the London opening.   
“Have you gotten anything to wear, Nell?” Marie asked. Nell shook her head, about to respond, when Rita cut in, unexpectedly. 

“Or is David buying you something?” 

Nell was trailing behind and stumbled on the last stair. She felt her face prickle and burn as a furious blush rolled over her face. Marie looked shocked at the abrupt question, then cast Nell a worried look. Rita continued to look to Nell, nonplussed. Nell took a deep breath and squared her shoulders before answering.

“We’re not...” Her voice shook, so she took a moment longer to breathe. “That’s over.”

“Ta.” Rita looked down to straightened the immaculate hem of her blouse. “Well, I did warn you, Nell.” Her pursed lips loosened a bit when she saw the struggle Nell was putting up to keep her composure.

“I hope you’re alright,” she added.

Nell nodded. 

“I ended it. In a way. I--” Nell attempted a smile. “I did appreciate your warning, Rita. I did listen to you.” Her smile quivered at the edges of her lips. Nell pressed her thumbnail into a specific place on her arm, determined to keep calm. 

Rita broke then, clapping her hands quickly before pulling Nell into a stiff hug.

“Oh stop, stop.” She briskly ran her hands down the tops of Nell’s arms. “I was just worried for you, girl. I’ve known David for a very long time and he can be a little nasty.” She stepped back and straightened her blouse again.

“I just didn’t want him cocking up our lovely little working arrangement.” 

There was a stunned moment of silence as Rita’s unexpected vulgarity and unintended pun settled about them, then Marie tittered with nervous laughter. 

“Right. On that note.” Rita touched Nell’s arm briefly, and made her way out the door. 

Marie exhaled a long breath once Rita had gone. 

“Nell, I swear.” She hiked her purse up onto her shoulder, shaking her head. “Are you sure you should even go to London? You do know--”

“Oh, yes.” Nell made for the door as well. “He’ll be there, I know.”

"What are you going to do?" Marie sprinted to keep up with Nell as they made their way to the apartment. 

"I--" Nell bounced on her toes waiting for the crosswalk signal. "I have no idea. It's hard enough seeing someone after... Something like that, even under normal circumstances." 

"Will you say something to him?"

Nell laughed. 

"I'm sure I won't even be able to get near him. He's... He's David Bowie. At a David Bowie exhibit." 

Now that Nell thought about it, it might be almost perfect, this situation. She could see him, fill her eyes with him, and all the while be protected by his sheer celebrity. 

"Did you love--”

“Marie,” Nell cut in quickly. “Don’t even say it. It’s too ridiculous.”

“It’s a legitimate question.” Marie began to dig through her purse for the keys as they rounded the last corner before their apartment. 

Nell considered that. She had tried to to stay away from that side of things, from the emotion, and had almost convinced herself that what she had experienced with David was a purely physical connection. She yearned for the closeness of him only, that singular intimacy. Her urges to call him when she had read a particularly interesting article or when a certain song came on the radio was simply a byproduct of that. She was almost certain of it. 

Almost. 

"No. It was never about that with us." 

They had made their way up to their apartment and Marie paused before unlocking the door. 

"People who scream at each other like you two did..." she sighed and unlatched the door. "It seemed like more." 

Nell didn't say any more to that. She laid her things down and flopped onto the couch, letting out a long, deflating breath. 

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" Marie called from the kitchen. 

Nell groaned and flopped an arm over her eyes. 

"I can't possibly do any more, so I guess." The past six weeks had indeed been a blurred, frenzy of a challenge. The changes David had discussed with Rita turned out to be far more complicated than he let on. Though, this surprised no one. 

She almost wanted to thank him for the infuriating bulk of work he sent their way. It was actually almost impossible to think of anything but the collection. Much of the additions were notes, inspiration for albums, hastily sketched concept art, though some were actual completed pieces. Pieces that Nell had seen first hand. 

They came sporadically and always by courier. He never made another appearance. But Nell welcomed each delivery as a further distraction from the things she'd said, and the way those things had contorted hurt onto his face. It was cruel that each distraction was a piece of the whole that she was avoiding, but Nell had been cruel. They both had. 

“Have you gotten anything to wear for London?” Marie came in, carrying two glasses of wine, one a juice glass, one a mason jar. The wine was from a box, so Marie always insisted they drink it from appropriate glasses.

“Honesty in advertising,” she’d called it.

“No, not yet.” Nell swirled her mason jar wine, her lips pursed in thought. “I’ll have to get something long sleeved.”

“Ugh,” Marie gurgled through her sip. “You do not!” 

She set her glass down and yanked up Nell’s sleeve.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of; it says so right there.” She pressed her finger into the words, her eyes hard on Nell.

“We’ll find you a fantastic dress. Something long and black that shows off your arms. You’ll look amazing and he’ll see that.”

Nell strummed her fingers against her lips. 

“You think so?” Nell didn’t know if she possessed the kind of bravery it would take to proudly wear a tattoo of the lyrics written by the man the entire exhibit centered on. It would keep her farther from him, that was certain. 

“I do.” Marie smiled and threw back the rest of her wine. “Top off?” She raised her eyebrows at Nell’s half filled glass.

Nell took a long swig and handed over the glass.

\---

Nell was embarrassingly early for work the next day. She sat impatiently waiting for the courier to come for the collection, sipping nervously at her coffee. She wasn't sure why she had gotten so wrapped up in this project; it would be one of many that she would have to undertake as an employee of the archive. Perhaps nothing of this magnitude again, but certainly this wasn't the last of these shipments she would have to prepare. 

It was the first, however, and she wanted it to go as smoothly as possible. Rita wouldn't be in today unless something dire happened, and Marie was running late, as usual. All Nell could do was sit and wait for the courier van to take the collection to the airport. 

When the van pulled up, Nell leapt into action, directing which boxes should be loaded first. Marie showed up after a time, but mostly stayed in the background, letting Nell conduct the orchestration. Near the end of the loading of the collection, a black sedan pulled up to the curb behind the van. A smart looking woman in a crisp business suit stepped out followed by a large man in street clothes. He was carrying a small metal shipment box. The woman approached Nell, though she was so ensconced in the loading of the van, she didn’t notice.

“Are you Nell Majewski?” the woman asked, her English accent as crisp as her suit. 

Nell jolted and turned towards the woman, though did not give her full attention.

“Yes. If you could give me just a moment--”

“We have an addition to make to this shipment.” The woman made a small gesture at the man accompanying her, and before Nell could object, the man had handed off the box to those loading the van.

“Hey!” Nell yelled. “Stop! You can’t do that!” 

The men loading the van hesitated, glancing between the man, the suited woman, and Nell. The woman made another nod and the box was hesitantly placed in the back of the vehicle as the doors were closed.

“Hey!” Nell yelled, again. She whirled on the woman. “What do you think you are doing? I have no idea what that even was! I haven’t accounted for that in my spreadsheets...I--” Nell was so flustered she was sputtering. “Who the hell are you?”

She didn’t recognise this woman. She had never accompanied the couriered deliveries before, much less directed mystery boxes to be included into a shipment that was otherwise meticulously catalogued. 

“I’m a representative of Mr. David Robert Jones.” The woman looked stern and as if she knew exactly how to deal with girls like Nell.

Nell rolled her eyes at the formality of the use of his full name, and at the woman’s superiority. 

“I figured that,” she snapped. “You can’t just add to the shipment like that. I have to include it in my packing sheets, at the very least.” Nell began walking over to the van to take the box out herself.

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Majewski,” the woman said, stopping Nell with her voice. “Mr. Jones asked that I inform you that it was all settled and that the host museum has been made aware of the addition.”

Nell was fuming. It was one thing for him to boss her, to belittle her when they were alone together, but to send some immaculate looking representative to do it for him on the sidewalk-- it was infuriating.

“Oh, did he?” she spat. "Look, I don't care what 'Mr. Jones' said, that box is not going to be blindly tossed into this shipment I have spent months preparing. I won't allow it." 

“Yes, well." The woman sniffed. "He also wished me to tell you to--” the woman paused and tipped up her chin for emphasis. “To ‘let it be, you stubborn girl.’”

Heat was rising in her face and Nell could sense the discomfort mounting from all those watching-- the men loading the van, Marie. She also knew that she was very near a breaking point, her last several months work focused on this day and here was yet another unexpected difficulty.

“Did he tell you anything else?” Her voice was low and tone was dry. 

“Yes. He said that you would be unreasonable, unmanageable, and unnecessarily petulant.” The woman glanced again at the man who had accompanied her and they both started making their way back to the car. “You did not disappoint,” the woman tossed over her shoulder.

That silenced Nell. She watched stock still as the two got back in the car and simply drove away. The men with the van were still silent, waiting for an indication on what to do next. Marie finally stepped forward and waved her hand at them.

“I think that’s everything, guys,” she called, and they nodded quickly before leaving.

"Nell?" Marie approached her friend slowly. 

Nell took in a long, shaky breath before letting the air whoosh from her in an angry gust. 

"I need you to help me find a really fantastic, sleeveless dress."

\---

“I hate flying.” Marie was pouting into her paper cup of hot tea as they sat at the gate waiting to board the plane.

“Really?” Nell was heavily steeped in a collection of short stories and was only half listening.

“Yeah. I know the statistics and everything, but it just feels so unnatural to me.”

“Mmm.” Nell turned a page.

“Do you like flying?” Marie tried again.

“It’s not my favorite thing, or anything.” She very pointedly did not look away from her book. “Beats the hell out of driving.”

The silence stretched for a few moments, interrupted only by the turning of Nell’s pages and overhead announcements. 

“Are you nervous about the opening?” Marie’s anxious energy was beginning to grate on Nell, who was diligently trying to ignore her.

“Mmmm,” was all she offered in return. She wasn’t trying to be rude, but the very last thing Nell wanted to do at that moment was talk about the collection or about the opening.

“Nell?”

She snapped her book closed.

“Yes?” Her irritation was blatant.

“What’s the matter?” Marie looked frayed. 

Nell sighed. She hadn’t meant to attack Marie.

“I’m sorry. I’ just trying really hard to...not think right now.”

“About David? About seeing him again?” Marie prompted. She turned towards her in the hard row seat.

Nell was always surprised at Marie’s ability to cut straight to the quick of an issue. Whether she meant to or not, she always managed to throw Nell off track. It was what she liked best, and least, about her.

“About-- any of it.”

She toyed with the edge of a book page.

“But yes, about seeing him again.”

“It’ll be…” Marie didn’t finish the sentiment, as she wasn’t sure how it would actually turn out. 

Nell resumed reading her book.

“Yeah.”

 

\---

Nell plucked a flute of champagne from a tray as it passed, feeling very much like she was in the movies. She hadn’t worn a floor length dress since her prom and she had never spent the amount of time on her hair as she had this evening. The event itself was thus far lavish, though intimate. The museum was a small one, giving the distinct impression of an art gallery rather than an actual museum. Many people in attendance were wondering at David’s intention of attending, in fact, because of this. Though, as she slowly made her way around the room, she began to be made aware of all sort of speculations. 

“He’s coming alone; isn’t that strange?”

“That he’s coming at all is strange. When did you last see him?”

“The selections for the exhibit are certainly...unusual.”

“He’s unusual, though, isn’t he?”

“I hear there is to be another exhibit, a larger one. Much larger.”

“I think he’s planning something.”

“He’s always planning something.”

Nell kept to herself. Marie was making talk with the bartender and Rita was speaking with people Nell knew would require a formal introduction first. She tried to appear nonchalant, though the reality was, she was making her way to a specific section of the exhibit. There was something she had to see. 

“A larger exhibit?” Someone was supposing the rumor aloud again.

Nell allowed herself a private smile at that, knowing more than the average premier attendee. She thought back to the last few days, to the whirlwind of activity. After assisting with any last minute hitches, Rita had surprised her by setting up a coffee date with one of the higher-ups in the operation. She simply gave Nell an address to meet with the man-- a Mr. Flemming. Nell had tried to ask more about the mystery meeting, but Rita was purposefully vague in her details.

When Nell had arrived at the small coffee shop, a spruce man in his fifties waved her over to his table. They made brief introduction before he went to the counter to order Nell’s coffee.

Nell thought this all very strange.

“I’m sure you are wondering why I’ve asked you to meet me, dear, aren’t you?”

Nell politely waved off his offer of creamer and sipped at her coffee before answering.

“Well, yes, actually. Is everything alright? I hope there wasn’t an issue with the collection.”

Mr. Flemming, or “Please, call me Colin.” smiled. He seemed to have a very easy smile, one that sat at ready at the corners of his mouth, waiting to be employed. 

“No, no problem, dear. Quite the opposite, in fact.” 

He slid an identification badge of a very prestigious museum in London across the table. It had Nell's name typed on it. 

"I'm hoping to steal you away."

Nell picked up the badge, her brow crinkled in thought. 

"I'm sorry?"

“Miss Majewski, Nell, your work on this project has been exemplary. I’ve never had an easier time receiving and displaying a collection than I have with this one you prepared.”

“Mr. Fle...Colin, that’s not--”

“And,” he continued on over Nell’s objections. “That kind of skill is something I am going to very much desire in the coming months.”

Nell set the badge back onto the table. “I’m not really following.”

“Tomorrow night is a sort of audition for us. To try to feel out those that would be most integral in the financial backing. And of course, to see how David Bowie likes it.” He smiled again at that. “Rock stars are notorious for their shifts in moods. You’ll have to trust me on that.”

Nell smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure.”

"The next exhibit would be much larger, with a wider release. Much wider. International tour, wider.”

Nell’s head spun at the implication.

“I asked to take on Rita, as she’s the heart of this archive. And she gave me your name. She told me how much you did for this collection, and right out of uni.” 

“I’m sorry, this is a lot to take in all at once.” She took a fortifying drink of her coffee. “You want me just to move to London? To work on this collection.”

“And every other of our collections. I would like someone like you on my team.” He leaned closer to her. “Think of it, Nell. You’re young, you’re talented. London would be a great place for you.” His smile took on a wolfish edge.

“I can be young and talented in New York City, too.” Nell didn’t like the way he was looking at her, and she was tired of feeling like she was earning her achievements by lying on her back. 

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“I like you, Nell,” he decided. He considered her for a moment longer. “But that has nothing to do with this. I wanted to hire whomever was responsible for making my job easier than it’s been in 20 years. And that was you.”

Nell set her cup down. 

"I don't know."

"I assure you," he dangled the identification card from his fingers. "I would make this well worth your time. There is much more opportunity for advancement in an operation our size. And more variety. Unless, of course, you want your field of study to only be David Bowie for the foreseeable future." 

She shifted in her chair at the thought. 

"Come, come Nell. What's holding you back?" he asked. His wolfish grin was back in place. 

"Miss?"

A quiet voice drew her back to the present. A waiter, wanting to take her now empty champagne flute from her. 

“Sorry.” She handed it over. Just as she was making her way over to the other side of the room, the guest of honor arrived. There was the roar of the press, paparazzi, and other assorted fanatic peoples as the doors opened and the immediate hush as he was ushered inside. The room burst into applause and everyone made a sudden flux towards him. All, except Nell. 

She took this opportunity to finally cut a path to the section of the exhibit between that of the Thin White Duke era and the shift towards the eighties. As she had been leaving her meeting with Colin, she had remembered to ask on the way out:

“Oh! There was a last minute addition to the shipment. So last minute, in fact, that I wasn’t able to properly receive it. I hope that wasn’t too much trouble.”

Colin had been searching his pockets for his mobile phone and answered off hand, “No, no trouble. We figured it out soon enough.”

“What was it, if you don’t mind? I’ve been in a panic that I’d unknowingly shipped a severed hand to London,” she joked. She tried to keep her tone light, but in reality, Nell was very nervous.

“Ha! No, nothing like that.” He found his phone and began checking through his messages. “It was practically nothing, really. I was surprised he made such a fuss to include it. Some little drawing-- we tacked it in with the other Berlin era memorabilia.” He brought his phone to his ear. “Must run. See you tomorrow evening, Nell.”

Nell had wondered what was so important that he eek it in at the last moment. Just as she had almost made it to the display, however, a hand on her bare elbow stopped her.

“Hello, Nell.” 

She turned and looked into Colin Flemming’s smiling face. 

“Colin.” 

"Not interested in meeting a music legend?" His face gestured over his shoulder, to the relative chaos. 

“Oh, no, it’s not--” Nell suddenly tucked her arm along her side, feeling the self-consciousness she knew she would be fighting all night. She’d worn her hair up and styled, and in a last minute show of pique, had finished it with the ivory comb. Her dress was in fact long and black and fantastic, with a silhouette of a Greek statue-- empire waist, split fluttering sleeves at the peaks of her shoulders.She looked long and lean and almost tall in it and, like Marie promised, it set her slender arms to an advantage. Nell just felt exposed.

“I could introduce you to him.” Colin was smiling at her again, though he seemed to have toned down the earlier flirtation. Nell was glad for that.

“Please, no. I was just--” Nell began backing away, hoping there was a bathroom she could hide out in for the next three days.

“Oh, come on.” Colin took her hand and started towards the crowd of people. “He won’t bite you.”

Nell’s stomach churned as she quelled the mental image of the last time he had.

“David!” Colin shouted over the din. He turned towards them and his face lit with recognition when his eyes fell on Colin. Nell was trying to hide behind a group of women, but Colin still had a loose grip on her hand. David was making a path over.

"Colin, hello. Good show." He made indication of the display; he hadn't seen Nell yet. 

"I'm hardly the brains behind it." Colin said. "That'd be you-- and this girl here. Have you met Nell?" Colin tugged her from her relative hiding spot and David’s look went from polite to tense in an instant. "She works for your archive." 

Nell pulled her hand free of Colin's and tipped up her chin in a show of bravery she did not feel. 

David’s mouth coiled in the smile Nell had long memorized and she was almost prepared for his next play.

“Nell, is it?” He held out his hand, intending to shake hers, his eyes already dancing along the inked words Colin would not be able to miss.

She reached forward and returned his firm, too firm, handshake. “My, David Bowie. You’re certainly a big deal, aren’t you?” she returned coyly. His eyes darkened and he held fast to her hand, waiting.

“Nell, is that a tattoo?” Colin asked, as if on cue. David released her. “How surprising! Oh, do let me see.” 

She maintained her frigid eye contact with David and held her arm out to Colin.

“Is that--” Colin began.

“It’s nothing,” Nell said, breaking her gaze away from David. If he had hoped to embarrass her again, he was not going to succeed. “I’m sorry I ever got it.”

She rubbed at her arm and began backing away. “Excuse me.”

“Nell--” Colin started, but she had stopped listening.

She turned and stalked blindly off, careful to not glance over her shoulder like she so wanted. Without realizing it, she found herself at the Berlin portion of the exhibit.

Like the other portions, it was small, focused on a key outfit or two and supplemented with other appropriate artifacts-- photographs, notes, sketches. Her eyes flicked over the display, admiring the artistic flow of it. Colin gave her too much credit. Her work was much more technical than this. A proper display needed an artist's eye, something Nell lacked. It was as Nell was enjoying the arrangement of photos of the flat David had lived in with Iggy Pop that she noticed it. The last minute addition. 

It was, in fact, quite small and not at all obtrusive. It was a small sketch of parts of a naked woman, her body slender and stretched. 

_"The curve of your waist into the swell of your hip, " he said, simply._

Nell's ears were ringing and she felt as if the room was closing in on her. The drawing included a bit more detail than when she had seen it from across the room. The line of her waist had elongated and connected to the under curve of her breast, the sweep of her neck flowing into the shape of her bound arm. 

And penned in violent red ink, from the underarm to wrist of this sketched, thankfully unrecognizable Nell, were the words from 'Heroes.' 

And the shame was on the other side. 

The small description card read:

n. 

Circa, Berlin. 

She sensed his eyes and looked over her shoulder at long last. He was coming towards her, though he made an effort to keep his pace leisurely and his path indirect. She turned back to the display. 

It was small, she reminded herself. She had almost missed the sketch herself. And there were no distinguishing features that labeled it as Nell. Save one.

Nell jumped as fingers softly tickled at her wrist. He faced out to the room, his back to her, but he stood uncomfortably close. Over the ambient hum of the room, she could hear his voice as she continued to stare at the drawing.

“I often wonder if you think of me.” She squeezed her eyes shut and balled her hands into tight, angry fists. He trailed his fingers a little higher up her arm. She felt blazing heat where he touched and kept her face carefully forward. 

“In your bed?” She gasped in a breath. He greeted another patron and his brushing fingers traced back down.

“When you touch yourself?” She tried to pull her arm away but he caught it and pinched the thin skin at her wrist. Her heart was pounding and she felt a warmth slowly spread over her body. She loathed how she reacted so readily to him.

“Or worst of all, when you’re just sitting in your chair and have just finished reading a particularly interesting book?”

She felt over-heated, and trapped. He backed up, pressing off center into her back. He should back away, she thought. Someone is going to notice. 

“I don’t,” she said, her eyes fixed on the display. 

“Pity, that.” His voice was closer. “I often think of you.”

Nell ran.

She snatched her hand from him and unceremoniously toppled through the crowd. Once she broke through the thick of it, she made effort to control her panic and set off down a near, narrow hallway at a brisk pace, hoping to not draw too much attention to her escape. 

A short way down, the hallway forked into three directions. Nell darted through the open doors to her left only to find that she had come into a room with no exit. It was relatively empty, with only three colossal metal sculptures standing about the corners and a bench situated in the center. She had just made it to the other side of the bench when she heard him. 

"Nell."

She turned, her panic at a peak. He’d followed her. The room itself was very dimly lit, but the bright light from the hallway silhouetted his lithe figure in the doorway. He stood there for a beat longer, black against the shine of the hallway, before reaching to close one door, then the other. When the light winked out behind him, Nell realized her foolishness in staring at his silhouette. She was momentarily blind in the now darker room. 

"We've unfinished business, girl." His voice was a growl and her anger mixed headily with fear. 

"I think we finished quite spectacularly, actually," she spat back. She retreated quickly, stumbling backwards toward the far wall. 

"Lying again, Nell." His voice was sing-song and closer than she expected, as was the far wall. She clacked painfully against it and he was upon her. His hand reached from the dark and closed possessively around her neck, followed by the press of his body against her. 

He kissed her, a sudden contact that startled her. Her body's reaction to him was violent and primal and unwelcome. She had plans to taunt him, to tantalize him with the flash of her bare arms and her ivory comb, only to leave him wanting. Instead, she was pouring herself into him, filling his hollow with her desire. Had she no say, no control over this man? She shoved at him, not wanting to give in so easily, not wanting to give in at all. He kept her mouth captive, however, and was unmoved no matter her pushing palms. 

"Tell me you don't want me." He ground into her, already hard. His voice was punishing, his hand still cupped in warning about her throat. He was dragging her dress up her thighs, roughly raking his fingers over her skin. 

Nell's mind was reeling. This was moving too fast, and not nearly fast enough. Before she realized it, her hands were at the waist of his pants pulling his shirt untucked, much to her own frustration. She was blindly tearing at the buckle of his belt as he hooked her knee over his hip. They were in the dark of a museum rocketing towards something she hadn't known how desperately she missed and she was caught between wanting to be consumed by it and fearing the consequences if she was. She was angry, so angry. But she was also aching. For him. 

"I don't want you." She pulled him free from his trousers and stroked the length of him with even, deliberate pressure. His breathing was catching and he increased the press of his hand on her neck. Too fast; she had to think. He grabbed at her breast, hard and unforgiving, and an unbidden noise of desire erupted from her. The room was equally unforgiving acoustically and her voice echoed loudly back at her. 

"Quiet," he hissed before thinking better of it and silencing her with his mouth. It was a brutal clash of lips and teeth and as he tore at her mouth she realized he was equally ravenous and equally enraged. She clawed at him, hoping to both hurt him and draw him closer. 

His hand dropped from her breast and reached into the pocket of his sagging trousers. He broke their battle of a kiss only long enough to tear the condom package open with his teeth. Making bold eye contact, she plucked it from his hand and began in unroll it onto him. He set his mouth to hers again and hiked her other knee up to his waist, lifting her from the floor.

They needed to slow down, Nell thought, as he pushed aside the triangle of lace between her thighs. But then she guided him to her. 

As he pressed into her, he muttered against her lips. 

"Tell me how little I mean to you." He was pushing deeper into her and she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep quiet. 

"Nothing," she shuddered. "You mean--" he slammed into her, once, twice, and she sissed air through her teeth in pleasure pain. "--n-nothing to me." 

His hand had left her throat and was pulling at her hair while the other kept steady at her hip. He ratcheted his pace another harsh notch and Nell pounded her fists against his chest. 

She was flying, torn between the feeling of light and dark. She felt simultaneously completed and raw, and she knew that was exactly how this would always be. 

His lips were wet against her cheek and he was panting coarse breaths over her face. 

"Are you lying?" he asked, his voice strained, as her body began to pull into sharp focus. 

Her pounding fists had turned to grasping, tugging hands as her last strand of control began to fray. 

She threw her head back against the wall, leaning into his pulling of her hair, leaning into the storm. 

"Oh God, yes," she answered. 

“Tell me.” His lips dragged to her temple, pressing there, hard and constant. “Tell me!”

“I want you David.” Her voice was shattered, ragged and sharp. “Oh God, please! I’ve wanted you so badly.”

"Good." His lips moved to her ear. "Now, come for me." 

She broke, her lips pulled back in a silent scream. He was breaking, too, and pressed his body so flush against hers he robbed them both of breath. He bit her neck and she bit back a squeal. The sensation rolled over her in endless waves, more powerful, more heady than any other experience. She was greedily gasping air into her burning lungs, trying to drop back down to Earth before she was lost forever. His tugging hands in her hair had, at some point, turned to support, firmly cupping the back of her neck and head. She was drained, lifeless, yet more vital than she had been in weeks. 

She could see him clearly now that her eyes had adjusted to the room. He was watching her face in stormy silence, his hair mussed. 

She lowered herself onto shaking legs and looked up at him. The joints of her fingers creaked at she loosed her grip on his jacket and shirt. Her hands were trembling as she reached to his face to brush back his hair and smooth away the creases between his eyebrows. He was searching her face, as if looking for a part of her he was willing to part with and finding none. Suddenly, the stern set of his mouth faltered. 

"Oh, Christ, Nellie. Your lip is bleeding."

That broke the spell of vitreous ire. Her hands left his face and pressed to her lips. 

“Only a little,” she breathed.

“Here.” He quickly refastened his pants and pulled a folded handkerchief from the pocket. He blotted softly at the split.

“I’ve missed you, little bird,” he whispered.

Her tongue darted out to inspect the cut of her lips, tasting the dry metal of the hurt. 

“Why do you call me that?”

He smiled, his eyes still on her mouth. 

“The old adage, about how the caged bird sings the sweetest.” His eyes lifted to hers. They looked sad.

“I could never keep you in a cage, though, could I?” His smile was small. “Not my Nell.”

He returned the bloodied handkerchief to his pocket and looked away. “I wanted to dangle you from my wrist like the pretty thing you are. But...”

When he looked back, Nell was dismayed to see the resignation of his gaze. He kissed the unhurt corner of her mouth, so softly it broke her heart.

“They offered me a job at the museum.”

He pulled away, his face carefully blank.

“Oh?”

“I--” She leaned more heavily against the wall, searching for support. “I told them yes.”

There was a moment of hesitation, then he stretched a broad smile that did not touch his eyes.

“That’s excellent. This is--- that’s fantastic. London’s a...it’s a great town. I’d know.” He was backing away, tucking in his shirt and straightening his tie. Looking anywhere but at her. 

She went to him, her hand at his arm. 

“Isn’t this better?” she asked, failing to keep the desperate trill of her voice tamed. “Now, we don’t have to watch it fall apart.”

He only looked at her then, silent and still. She was closer to his height in her heels and could see, for the first time, the age in his eyes. 

“I need to get back,” he said.

“Yes.” She almost laughed. “I can’t believe you left. Here--” she buttoned his suit jacket, grinning at his insistence of wearing a suit in lieu of a tuxedo. “Your shirt is...wrinkled. There-- you can’t see as much of it.”

She stepped back and felt at her mostly fallen hair. 

"How do I look?" she asked. 

He chuckled, taking in her hair and the angry red marks on her skin from being thoroughly loved. 

"Conspicuous. You-- you may want to duck out."

She scraped her hair back from her face and tried tugging it into place again with the comb. She could feel that the product was mostly worked out of it. Conspicuous, indeed.

“Right.” She continued to fuss with her hair, suddenly self conscious that she looked so bedraggled that she couldn't return to polite company. 

“You look lovely," he added. "Utterly spent and well had and lovely." 

She fixed her eyes on him, hoping to memorize this moment when all the things they weren't saying were so much more important, so much more apparent, than the things they were. 

"I missed you, too."

The quiet brought the sounds of the still crowded main exhibit room down the hallway to them. 

"I really must--" he began. 

"Yes, go!" Nell forced a smile, her eyes surprisingly dry. "Don't want to be discovered in an empty room with an archivist. People will talk." Her jokes were half hearted at best, but David politely smiled. 

"Goodbye, my Nell."

She politely smiled back, feeling like more of a liar than ever. 

"Goodbye, David."

He stayed for a moment longer, looking like he was going to say something more, then turned and pulled open the double doors and left. 

Nell pressed the back of her hand into her mouth to stifle the dry sob, breaking the split of her lip afresh. She waited several long moments, gathering her composure, then losing it all over again. Finally, she simply sank down onto the bench at the center of the room, waiting for the tears to accompany her helpless sadness. They never came.

\---

“I lost you last night.” Marie commented the next morning as Nell was brushing her teeth. Her lip looked better, but Nell was back to cardigans, mostly to cover the faint marks of their rough handling of each other from the night before. 

“I ducked out early,” Nell said after she rinsed her mouth. 

Marie joined her at the mirror. 

“Did something happen with David?” Again, Marie was cutting straight to the heart of the issue. And for once, Nell did, too.

“Yes.”

Marie started brushing her hair. “I noticed he disappeared for...a while. Everyone did, Nell.”

“But I’m sure no one missed me. That’s the important thing.” Nell pulled back her hair, determined to not get upset. Marie was blessedly silent on the subject after that. Nell went to pour them both coffee from the en suite carafe and mused at the idea of her recent flux in coffee consumption. For some reason, it comforted her like a cigarette or a stiff drink might comfort others. And Nell had a thing for vices; she knew that now.

“So how’s this going to work, then?” Marie asked. “You moving to London.”

“I’ll stay here a few more days, working out the particulars, finding a, um, flat. Then I’ll come back to New York for a few days, settling things, sending stuff back to my mom’s place, sending stuff to London. Then, I guess, I’ll fly back here.” She took a drink of her coffee. “It’s pretty exciting.”

“Nell,” Marie said. “Why are you doing this?”

Nell’s back straightened as she looked into the black of her coffee cup. “It’s a great opportunity. It’s a very prestigious museum. I’m young and unattached and there’s never going to be a better time for me to do something like this.”

“Yeah,” Marie returned, sounding now quite unconvinced. “Are you sure you aren’t doing this to prove you’re young and unattached? We are a very prestigious archive. There’s opportunity with us, too, if that’s what you’re looking for.” She set down her cup. “I just don’t want you to… Please make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons.”

Nell smiled, a false gesture, before nodding. 

“I am.”


	6. Chapter 6

Staying in London a few extra days soon turned into a few extra weeks. Originally, she was supposed to have a few days to get her new hire paperwork started, then would be free to go back to New York to collect her things. It was not turning out quick so easy as that, with the complicated application process the museum had in place on top of the work visa heartache. Nell was quickly learning how easy her transition into the Manhattan archive had been. Finding an affordable flat in London was turning into a bit of a farce without a Marie there to offer an extra room to her. Not having a roommate, or six at this rate, to split the rent was proving a huge problem. Nell was also anxious to finally stop living out of her suitcase. Frequenting the hotel’s laundry room every couple of days to wash the few changes of clothes she had packed was starting to wear on her. 

To keep her sanity intact, Nell called her mother often. After she broke the news of the transatlantic job offer, her mother had immediately upgraded the phone plan accordingly and Nell had made ample use of it. Like Marie, her mother couldn’t quite understand why she felt compelled to pick up her life so completely and transplant herself on English soil. Nell found herself parroting back Colin’s words over again-- young and talented and a wide range of subjects and greater opportunity for advancement. She did mean what she said, no matter how much she quoted her new supervisor, and the job was truly a fantastic opportunity. Though, as much as she hated to admit it, one reason shined above the rest.

So much less David.

Nell was running and she knew it. She was hiding her cowardice under this big, brave gesture of moving across the world. She was leaving the city she had truly come to love. She was leaving her mother, with whom she shared that singular closeness reserved for the only child of a single mother. She was leaving the job she had always wanted, only to pick up another that, while prestigious, smacked something dreadful of the most dogged of days of her graduate studies. All this to keep from facing the growing maelstrom that was her burgeoning relationship with David. 

How ridiculous. 

The work, or rather, the looming promise of work, was the only distraction from what Nell was feeling. She was glad for that, if nothing else. Once Colin found out about her experience in database creation, he began throwing all sorts of side projects at her. The initial exhibit that had brought her to London had been an utter success, the various donors and investors, not to mention the artist at the center of the display, parting very pleased indeed. Though, now, the collection was leaving the capable hands of the museum staff, and would undergo a thorough examination by a team of posh audio and visual designers. 

It wasn’t enough to have the pieces of music history merely displayed. The direction of the exhibit was shifting towards interaction, an art installment, a flooding of the senses, and away from a careful, linear education about a veritable Rock God. It was to become a subversive experience, and Nell would have little more to do with her pet project.. 

So much less David, indeed. 

Nell found herself swamped with the promise of archiving different large donations, and the categorization of these donations into the already established collections, as well as the digitization of the museum’s long-standing exhibits. It was overwhelming.

"Weren't you wearing that jumper yesterday?" Colin's voice came from behind her. She laid the manifest for the latest shipment on her temporary work table. She had situated herself in the center of the flux, waiting, or hoping, for a more permanent space. An office, she hoped, but at this point she would settle for an abandoned janitor's closet. Suddenly the cement-walled basement across the ocean seemed downright cozy, compared to the chaos of the bowels of the museum. 

She turned to look at him. His eyes crinkled in that wolfish smile of his, and Nell knew he wasn’t trying to be cruel. Her face heated, nonetheless.

"Not yesterday. But the day before, yes." She smoothed the front of her mustard yellow cardigan, fighting the embarrassment. "I didn't exactly pack for an extended stay." 

"Yes, well." Colin sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't expect the work visa paperwork to take quite this long." He sounded genuinely apologetic, his eyes no longer twinkling in mischievous mirth, and Nell somewhat regretted her cheeky response.

She glanced instead at the ever growing stacks of future work on the hobbled together workspace she had claimed. This felt similar to her graduate school days, when she worked endlessly on several unfocused projects, trying desperately to catch up. She almost never did, though that was more the nature of the job rather than her lacking the competency to finish. 

Colin cleared his throat. 

"I suppose we are also very eager for you to start. This is piling up quite spectacularly, isn't it?" He rested a hand on the stack of work Nell had none too affectionately come to call Colin’s, 'something to get you started once you get started' stack. All the informal training and “this is where we keep the kettle” was very well and good, but until her paperwork came through, Nell was stuck, unable to really begin on anything. 

She remained silent.

“Tell you what?” Colin said, brightly. “I’ll phone Lizbeth up in the office. She’ll cut you a check for a clothing stipend, and you take the afternoon to go buy a couple of changes. Get lost in Harrod’s or something. Call your mum. Tell her you’ll be home in a couple of days to collect your things, and say a proper goodbye.”

Nell’s eyes shot back to the stack on her desk.

“This’ll just be something to get you started once you get started,” Colin reassured her, gently rustling the papers, laughing at his own small joke. She sighed, wishing he would stop using that particular turn of phrase and rather just let her “get started” already. 

Ordinarily, Nell would balk at the idea of being dismissed from work to go shopping. She almost wondered if she should be offended. But then, it was at Colin’s insistence that she remained behind in London for such a long time, and she truly wanted to escape the stress of work piling up without her having the go ahead to actually start on it.

“Where can I find Lizbeth?” she asked, finally. 

Colin laughed.  
\----

Nell stopped by her hotel room before heading out to start shopping. She made a quick call to her mother, then tapped through to Marie’s number. She’d left Nell a message earlier that day.

“call me asap.”

“Hi, Marie,” she said when the line picked up. She had a purse-sized umbrella somewhere in the room, she knew. It had started to drizzle out and she wasn’t keen on walking the streets of London without it. “Is everything alright?”

“David Bow-- David came by today. To the apartment, not the archive,” Marie gushed.

Nell halted her search, trying to process this news.

“He did?”

“Yeah,” Marie said. There was silence on the other end of the line and Nell’s heart raced. She couldn’t think why he would come by her place when she wasn’t there. The silence stretched.

“Well--” Nell prompted. 

“He got pretty upset when I told him you were in London,” Marie eventually continued. Her words came in rushed gusts, as if she was holding back saying everything all at once, or perhaps afraid of what Nell’s reaction might be.

Nell quickly felt at her hair, then dropped her hand. The comb, as always, was snuggly in place. _As if it mattered_. Her thoughts wouldn't settle. 

“W-- Why--”

Marie started up again, her words fast and almost jumbled. “He thought you had left for London _again_ , Nell. He didn’t realize you hadn’t come back yet.” 

The pounding of Nell’s heart increased. _Oh_. 

“He thought I left without saying goodbye," Nell breathed. _Oh, oh_. 

Marie hummed into the phone. “That’s what I’m guessing.”

Another thought occurred to Nell. 

“Does he want me to say goodbye, then?” _Hadn’t they already done that?_

Nell could sense Marie’s exaggerated nod. “He seemed pretty hurt.” 

Nell plopped onto the end of the bed, the search for the umbrella forgotten. 

"Have you talked to him since, you know. The opening?" Marie’s voice was quiet, as if she thought speaking too loudly would shatter Nell. Her nervousness was doing nothing to settle Nell.

"No," Nell answered. God, had she wanted to. There were so many things about her new job and London and leaving her mother that she desperately wanted to talk to him about. She wanted that easy comfort they were able to slip into sometimes, when they least expected it. From across a café table. After he unfastened her from the exposed pipe in the studio. As he blotted her split lip after rendering them both breathless. They were never romantic instances, Nell realized. They didn’t do romance. But in the moments separating their passions, there was this soft ease they found in each other. Once, at the beginning of all this, Nell had wondered how she would live her life in the in between. She had found that the in between was her most favored of their moments, no matter how they frightened her. 

So many times she had picked up her phone, seeking this solace, just to lay it down again, messages unsent. They had said goodbye. It wasn't perfect, it was jagged and tender to the touch, but it had been said. It was with a little pride that she had kept herself from calling him, or from sending a quick text. She didn't want to be the one who crumbled, although her insides felt like loose gravel. Though, now...

He had hoped to see her again. 

She pressed fingers to one of her burning cheeks. An unsettling tickle of Nell didn’t know what bloomed in her chest. Did she want to see him again? The heated, immediate _yes_ troubled her.

"Nell?" Marie’s voice called from her almost forgotten phone. 

"Yeah," she answered on an exhale, an anxious trembling starting at the corners of her mouth. 

"He left something for you." Marie sounded so nervous. Nell couldn’t be sure why. 

"What did he leave?" she asked.

"The box is wrapped, Nell! I don't know what's in it!"

Nell pinched her lips together to suppress her smile. From whom, she didn't know. 

"What's in the box, Marie?" Nell asked again, knowingly. 

"A blouse," she blurted, and Nell’s smile broke through at the confession. "One of those gauzy, sheer numbers you used to wear before you became obsessed with your sleeve length." She paused, considering. "Before David." 

Her momentary smile flew from her face. Nell knew exactly what kind of blouse it was.

She suddenly felt the burn of anger. It mixed icey hot with the strange giddy sensation already swirling in her chest. It confounded her and the heady combination produced an even more confusing result.

Nell laughed. She was laughing in an uncontrolled, almost hysterical loop. It was laughter that stole her breath and made her eyes water. She heard Marie trying to calm her from over the line, distantly, as if her mad sounds of delirium had created a muffled separation within her.

“Nell! N-- What’s the matter? Are you okay?” 

Nell couldn’t stop herself. Her laughter reached a raucous peak that she wasn’t able to dull. She was gasping, choking, almost sobbing, and her stomach cramped in protest. She had to breathe.

“Nell!” Marie called again. Nell tried to focus on her voice, rather than the poisonous cocktail of emotions sluicing through her. She felt so angry! Why wouldn’t he leave her be? Why did he want her to keep hanging on? And why, she thought, why on earth was she so _pleased_ that he did? Her ire sprouted from this singular seed, the shriveled tuber of her frustration at his utter control over her. She so _wanted_ him to want her. She felt coursing, searing power in it.

God, she hated that.

“I’m--” she gasped. “I’m here.” She shook her head, a feeble attempt at clearing it. 

“What was that?” Marie was nearly yelling with her concern. She seemed to collect herself before continuing. “Nell,” her voice quieted further. “Is he leaving his wife?”

The words sobered her better than her absurd head shaking. A cold stab of dread, of fear, stilled her.

“What? No! No, why would he?” Her heart rate was ratcheting again. 

“I don’t know! You seemed… You were laughing. Like you were happy?” Marie clucked. “Or deranged. I don’t know, I thought maybe it was a signal or something. He was leaving her for you.”

“No,” Nell said, more firmly, the idea seeming too laughable to even entertain. “He isn’t. I-- I don’t want that.” The words fell from her mouth without her thinking first, and she could almost hear them tumble heavily through the receiver.

There was a pause, and then: “You don’t?”

Marie’s question was genuine.

The hysteria threatened again. Nell realized, with sudden blazing clarity, that no, she did not want that. Not even fractionally.

“No, I--” she giggled, and bit her cheek to keep it reigned in. Oh, it was making sense now.

“I’ve never wanted that. Not from--” Closer, it was so much closer. An idea that had been prodding at her since the first moment she gave into David.

“Not from anyone,” Nell finally said. 

“What do you mean?” Marie returned. She sounded incredulous. 

“I mean, I don’t want that, any of that, from anyone. I never have.” Nell was gaining momentum, her voice stronger with each syllable. Her resolve solidifying into something hard as ice and impenetrable as cement.

“What is ‘that’, even?” Marie asked. 

Nell thought for a moment before continuing. Not for her benefit, no, she wasn’t confused, but she took a pause to try to form the idea into words for another. “That,” she stated again. “Marriage and...and…that linear sort of relationship. I don’t want the--” another word, Nell needed another word. “Expected.”

“You mean to tell me that you wouldn’t want to be David’s wife? Or girlfriend even?” IT sounded as if, no matter how she might explain it, Maire might not ever understand. No matter. 

Nell didn’t even hesitate. 

“No.”

Nell had spent her whole life doing the things expected of her. She had made an identity based on it, her name another word for predictability. There was never a Nell that didn’t do as she ought. Not before David.

A slow smile crept across her face. Here, she thought, here was freedom. That intoxicating, confusing, tumultuous abnormality of her affair, yes affair! Forever an affair! with David. She felt it again, the sensation in her chest. She knew its name now.

Hope.

She hadn’t been aware that she had been standing at a precipice until now, but suddenly she felt like jumping, rather than backing away from the edge. Again. 

“Marie, I have to go. I have to call someone. I-- I’ll be home in a couple of days, okay?”

She disconnected too soon, before Marie had a chance to reply. But Nell had skipped three thoughts ahead, leaving the money for her stipend on the dresser and dialing a number on her cell. She was closing the door to her room, stepping out into the hall, intent on her destination, when the line picked up.

“Hello, Colin? We need to talk.”


	7. Chapter 7

Nell stood looking at the rows of buttons on the severely outdated apartment intercom directory, clutching a clumsily brown-paper-wrapped package to her chest. She wished she’d paid attention the night she followed David up the endless stairs; it might have made this guessing game a little easier. She hadn’t expected his com to be marked, but she also hadn't expected so many others to be unmarked as well. After several minutes of staring at the directory, backing up to the curb to count windows, then walking back to the buttons, she thought she was able to narrow it down to two possibilities. Her finger hovered over the call button.

 

She couldn’t press it.

 

She wiped her hand on the front of her jeans, thinking this was all quite ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have his number; she could call him and have him let her in. If he was even here.

 

She hoped he was here.

 

The sky overhead rumbled and Nell brought her hand back to the button. She couldn’t let it start raining. Showing up on his doorstep was bad enough; showing up on his doorstep dripping wet would be comically cliche, and something David, or Nell for that matter, would never stand for.

 

She pushed the button. After several tense moments, a woman’s voice answered.

 

“Yeah, who is it?” Panic spiked in Nell’s chest. Did he have someone over? Then she thought back to a long since whispered secret, the first time she ran from him.

 

_“I’ve never brought anyone here before.”_

 

“Uh,” Nell fumbled. “Sorry, I think I have the wrong apartment.”

 

The line disconnected before Nell realized how stupid her answer had been. She should have feigned distress and claimed to have forgotten her key. Then she could have just gotten rung in and avoided this intercom mess altogether.

 

She pressed the other button she thought might be his.

 

No answer.

 

She pressed again, longer this time and with a slight pulse at the end.

 

No answer.

 

The clouds rumbled again and Nell pressed the button a final time, one last long ring, as she held her breath.

 

The com picked up in the middle of it.

 

“Fuck off!”

 

The suddenness of David’s voice startled Nell and she forgot to speak up before he disconnected. She rang him again.

 

“Look, mate, you’ve the wrong flat--”

 

“David, it’s me!” There was a beat of silence and Nell hurtled through it. “It’s Nell!”

 

She could hear the faint static of the other line as a raindrop fell. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting for his response.

 

He hung up.

 

Another drop of rain.

 

Then the door release buzzed.

 

Nell ran inside as the sky opened up and made immediately for the stairs. Again she lamented not paying more attention when she had been led up these stairs that first time, but after hurrying down one incorrect hallway and then back to the stairs to try one more floor up, she found herself in front of his door. Her breathing was ragged and she hesitated again before knocking.

 

It wasn’t too late to run back down the stairs and leave this as it was. Broken and incomplete.

 

But before she could turn away, the door swung open. 

 

Nell almost sighed in relief at the sight of him. He looked tired, the worn thin look of a man flirting with the phrase "strung out." Nell hoped that wasn't entirely her fault. He gripped the door with one hand, the other bracing against the jamb. It added to his frayed look, and gave the distinct impression of barring her entry to the studio.

 

Perhaps she shouldn't have come.

 

"I got you a sweater," she blurted, suddenly. She held out the wrapped package and the paper crinkled loudly. He only looked at her, not glancing at the gift she extended.

 

“It’s not your sweater, I-- I’m keeping that.” She fumbled with the package, feeling ridiculous that he was making no effort to contribute to this pending train wreck.

 

"It's--" She sighed and pulled it back to her, ripping into the brown paper. "It was stupid to wrap it. Why on earth did I wrap it?" she muttered.

 

The paper fell quietly to the floor.

 

"A girl at Harrod's helped me pick it out. I-- I told her about your eyes."

 

"Nell." David's voice was soft and pained.

 

She held up the slightly rumpled sweater, though she looked anywhere but directly at him. "The bronze color is supposed to compliment blue eyes. She was pretty helpful. Though I think she would have been much more obliging if she knew she was helping pick out a sweater, 'a jump-ah', for David Bowie."

 

He pressed his lips together, though Nell wasn't sure if it was to keep from smiling or from yelling. Nell kept going.

 

“It’s got these holes sewn into the cuffs of the sleeves, so you can put your thumbs through. I thought that might be something you’d like. Though now that I think of it,” she hesitated as he shifted his weight. “it might look strange if you didn’t put your thumbs through. With these big, gaping holes at your wrists.”

 

“For fuck’s sake, Nell!” David finally yelled. She shoved the sweater into his chest, pushing him into the studio. She was glad for a fight.

 

"I'm not your little bird!" She turned and slammed the door closed behind her, leaving David to clutch awkwardly at the sweater she had thrust upon him. When she turned back to him, her eyes were flashing, her loose hair wild about her shoulders. "I will never dangle from your wrist."

 

He looked as if he would speak and Nell slashed her arm through the air, silencing him.

 

"No! I--" She tugged at her hair in frustration, so flustered at the downward turn this had taken. Her earlier anger had resurfaced and she was quickly losing control of herself and the situation. She took a breath to focus on what she wanted to say, though her volume was still left unchecked.

 

"I don't trust you! I need to be able to trust you.” She advanced, and David, for once, retreated. “If I say, 'Don't come to my apartment.' I need to know that you aren’t going to come to my apartment. If I'm going to stay here, I have to know that I can trust you!"

 

"Now, hold on!" David tossed the sweater onto a nearby table and took a tense, and small, step towards her. "What makes you think you are blameless? I can't trust you either!"

 

"Of course you can!" They were yelling properly now, the room sparking with the built up electricity of their vitriol. "Of course you can trust me!" Nell’s voice cracked with her indignation.

 

"No, of course. You're absolutely right," David returned, his tone satiric and cool . He took another step closer, the paint-caked floorboards creaking his slow course. He seemed to be gaining some of his old confidence. "I can absolutely trust that you will _run_ the moment this,” he waved a hand through the space between them, “gets any further than ‘the ol’ in-out!’”

 

Nell was not to be had by his crassness or his cruelty. Not this time.

 

“Can you blame me, David?” Her voice was quieter now, though no less deadly. A dagger in the night, rather than a grenade lobbed into a foxhole.”What indication did I have that I meant anything to you? You called this,” she angrily flapped her hand in the space between them, an exaggerated imitation of his previous gesture, “inconsequential.”

 

“I had to, Nell!” he boomed. “I was trying to distance--” He made a strangled noise of frustration and speared his hands through his hair. He turned, as if searching the room for something. Words, perhaps. Or answers. He found something, and turned back to her.

 

“I am not a young man,” he started. His voice was low and dark. Nell recognized the tone, and steeled herself for it. “But you, Nellie, ohh _you_ put the thoughts of a young man in my head. You make me _want_ things.” His words blackened with charred desire, with that smoldering danger that he had used against her so many times before. She bit her cheek to stay grounded. She let him continue stalking towards her, but she didn’t back away. She wasn’t to be pinned against a wall again. She was _letting_ this happen.

 

She saw the momentary flash of surprise when his stratagem failed, and, like an actor on the boards, he switched tactics, sensual brooding for serpentine temptation.

 

“You make me want to write again, songs about a kept woman and her keeper. Wouldn’t that be delightful, Nellie, my singing your fear to the world?” He was right upon her now, and her head swam with the pounding of her heated blood. He was truly throwing everything at her, trying so desperately to scare her into running again. He wanted so badly to win, but Nell had already claimed that prize the moment she stood at his door. She was not to be outdone.

 

“What else do you want?” she asked. She tried imitating the smoke and ash of his voice, engaging in the match when he had expected a forfeit. She looked at him invitingly, playing along, wanting more. “What else do you imagine?”

 

She kept her face placid, though her eyes challenged him, all the while battling the blush that threatened. She felt equally absolute and fraudulent, Othello’s Desdemona, both meek and bawdy.

His eyes widened at the challenge, and he stepped closer still, intent on crowding her. She merely tipped her face up to his.

 

“I think of a little girl, with my crazy eyes and your crazy hair. I imagine,” he brought his hand to her face and traced cold fingertips down her burning cheek, “what we might call her.”

 

Nell couldn't quite quell the urge squirm under the weight of his last profession. His face lit with his small success, and he pressed his cool fingers into the line of her jaw.

 

"You said at the café that I scared you, Nellie." With each use of his disquieting pet name, he chipped another layer of ice from her resolve. She resisted squirming again. "How are you faring now?"

 

Nell’s breath was catching, but she was less frightened than she thought she should be. She wasn’t sure how much of this was his endgame, his flailing attempt at regaining the lead or frightening her into submission, but she would take it as far as was necessary. Nell refused to be bested, again and again. She turned her head and nipped sharply at one of his fingertips with her teeth.

 

“I like Astrid,” Nell crooned, narrowing her eyes. She watched him closely, waiting for the moment his defeat would show through on his face. A heartbeat too late, she realized that perhaps his victory wouldn't come in the form of her pulling away again. A satisfied smirk confirmed her suspicions as he wove his fingers through the coarse coils of her hair.

 

"Astrid, yeah? Do you walk around with baby names in your arsenal or have you truly put some thought into this?" The warm amusement of his voice was heating her cheeks further and she shook her head, dislodging his hand. She stepped away.

 

"It was my grandmother’s name. I bet you'd just love it if I sat around thinking up names for our kids."

 

David laughed. "And now we are having more than one! Darling, I never knew!"

 

"Stop it, David!" Nell almost stamped her foot in frustration. Almost. But she focused on retaining her pillar-like stance, on the cement under the melting ice. "I just didn’t want you to win." The words sounded pettish, and she hadn't really wanted to give a name to her resolve, but she didn’t correct herself.

 

"Win?" He was still smiling, as if relieved to be able to tease her again.

 

"By getting me to run." She sighed, toying at the ivory comb in her hair before she could catch herself. She might never be able to engage him without fidgeting, but she was nevertheless holding her ground. "I'm done with running."

 

His smile grew. "I can't say it's a loss to have you stay."

 

She took a fortifying breath, and focused on maintaining eye contact. "I was serious, before. I can't trust you farther than I can throw you. And that's a problem."

 

The teasing tone was gone from his voice as he scrubbed a hand over his face.

 

"I know, darling."

 

This was the second time in as many minutes that he had invoked this new endearment. Nell wasn't sure what to make of it.

 

“I’ve grown quite used to simply taking what I want.” He looked to Nell, but she said nothing, letting him come to this on his own. “I know that isn’t a good excuse, not a bit. But I’ll try--”

 

David stopped, as if something quite obvious had just occurred to him.

 

“Earlier. You said-- 'If you were going to stay' …” His voice trailed off.

 

“Yes?” Nell continued to look at him coolly.

 

“You’re staying. You’re not moving to London.” His face and voice revealed nothing, as if he were afraid to hope. He posed the question as a hesitant statement, unsure of its validity, looking for confirmation.

 

Nell’s lips quirked at his stillness.

 

"No. I'm not moving to London." Her voice was soft, but she was unable to hide the joy of saying the words aloud. David’s rigid posture melted into something like relief. But still they did not go to each other. Like a swaying bridge, the silence stretched between them, awaiting a soul brave enough to cross.

 

David stiffened again, and tipped up his chin.

 

"You'll stay here, in the studio. I could-- I'll make it more livable." He took a cursory look around, hand worrying the back of his neck, sizing up a project only he could see. "Christ, I'll buy the flat above this; make the space larger." He glanced back to her. "For you."

 

Her timid smile widened and she felt an expanding sensation behind her ribs. He was making small steps around the place, as if already pacing out the renovations.

 

"No," she exhaled. She thought of her hysteric laughter when she had spoken with Marie, and reeled in her wide grin.

 

He turned back to her, forehead pleated in confusion.

 

"No? But you said--"

 

"I'm not going to live here as your beholden muse."

 

The thought seemed to excite him, and he chuckled darkly. He sauntered to her, his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

 

"Now, that's a sexy idea." His voice was hoarse, and he raked his eyes leisurely down her figure. He came right up to her, so close she could smell the last cigarette he'd smoked. He kept his chin tipped up, and looked down his nose at her with heavy-lidded eyes, his lips parted. "Dress you up in an ivory chiton, drape you with a gold himation." He ran a hand down her left arm, hovering a whisper over her skin, and came to a stop at her hand. "Spangle your fingers with hammered bronze rings. I could lash you to the wall again, or perhaps to the bed...Defile you as a satyr might."

 

Nell nearly moaned. She wanted so badly to touch him, to get lost in the heat and textures, in his whispered black promises. She balled her hands into tight fists, and clutched them to her chest to keep from reaching out and closing the agonizing distance. David licked his lips at her defensive gesture, a wicked curve to his lips, and Nell shook her head to suppress her heated reaction. She had to say her piece, first.

 

"I'm going to stay with Marie for a while longer, and then I'm going to get my own apartment. It's going to be cramped and inconveniently located because that's what I will be able to afford. And you won't help me pay for it--"

 

"And I won't be allowed over," he finished, snidely.

 

Nell sighed, trying hard not to sweep away from him in frustration.

 

"That's not what I said! I just want you to honor my requests." She looked hard at him, trying to make him understand. "I think, in all this, I've earned that much."

 

He considered her a moment longer, the want still etched on his face.

 

“Yes, I suppose you have.” He paused, and his tone lost some of the sensuous desire, sounding instead like a man broken by something else entirely. “I do wish that you would want me to drop by your apartment.”

 

Nell’s resolute fists loosened, and she placed shaking hands on the flat of his chest. Finally touching him, seeking that comfort. He looked broken further at the contact.

 

“I do. I want all of this, whatever it is. It took me a long time to realize that this is something I’ve always wanted, in a way.”

 

“You’ve always wanted to be the inamorata of a famous rock star?” he asked, though his voice was lighter.

 

“No,” she breathed with a smile, and focused her eyes on the faint ripple of pulse in the line of his neck. “I’ve always wanted something…” She thought a moment, not sure how to word it now that it was standing close enough to subsist off the breath she was finished breathing. “Fantastic. Something that defies what I’ve known to be a proper option.” She brought her eyes back to his. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to scale the walls I’ve built in my mind.”

Nell curled her fingers against his chest, scratching her nails along the fabric of his shirt.

 

“I think I’m finally ready to knock those walls down.”

 

David brought his hands up to hers on his chest, and wrapped his fingers around her small wrists, one long digit at a time, hard and gripping. As if he were locking her into place. She felt a strange sort of freedom in the gesture.

 

“You’re mine, then? You’ll say it?”

 

Nell chewed the inside of her cheek, though her answer was obvious.

 

“I’m yours. But on my own terms,” she said with a small raise of her eyebrows.

 

He gripped her wrists tighter. “I don’t like that.”

 

Her lips twisted. “I know.”

 

"Could I make a request for you to honor, then?" He was dragging her hands up his chest, and rubbed his stumbled cheek against the sensitive skin at the base of her left palm.

 

"That's fair," she answered, though it could have been anything.

 

"Will you stay here?"

 

Nell opened her mouth to answer, but David bit the outside swell of her palm, halting her response.

 

"Only sometimes. When I need you the most," he continued. After a moment, he added, "Or if you should ever think to need me."

 

There was an ache in her throat at his words, and while she wanted to reassure him of how desperately she needed him, Nell thought he might not like to hear that. Not in this moment, at least.

 

"I'll stay. Sometimes." She scratched lightly at his rough cheek, learning the new texture. "And we can talk about the chiton-satyr thing."

 

He laughed, fondly at a good joke, rather than in temptation or mockery. That comforting ease, the in between Nell had so missed, was winding around them in a soft cloud. She relaxed into his body, just a bit.

 

"Will you stay tonight?"

 

She almost answered without thinking, a hasty "yes" and a sharp tug to bring his mouth, finally, to hers. But she shook her head instead.

 

"I've only been on solid ground for about an hour. I only stopped at home long enough to drop off my luggage before coming here. I need a shower."

 

That telling gleam was back in David's eyes, and he began slow-stepping backwards through the studio, pulling her by her still captured wrists.

 

"David--"

 

He bumped through a narrow door over by the unmade bed, pulling them into a surprisingly spacious bathroom. The whole room was tiled, and with the absence of a curtain, it simply ended with a couple of shower heads and spigots at the far side of the room. Nell thought they could get up to quite a lot of trouble in a shower this size.

 

He loosed her hands and turned on the water with an exactness that made Nell question how much time he'd spent here. He stepped around the spray and immediately began ridding her of her clothes. She laughed as he drew her shirt over her head, though the sound faltered when she was able to see his face again. He looked so genuinely happy, and though Nell never thought of him in terms of age, in that moment, he looked so much younger. She reached to help him out of his casual, loose-fitting studio clothes. Once bare, he grabbed her hand and pulled her through the steam and under the almost too hot spray.

 

There, he finally tugged her flush to his body and, holding her head in both of his hands, kissed her soundly. Nell sighed into the familiarity of it, and ran her hands over the water slicked heat of his body, wanting to take more from the moment. She savored the slant of his mouth over hers, his thin lips firm and direct, manipulating her's so expertly, only to pull away and playfully dart his tongue to taste where his lips had been. He tipped her head back into the flow of water and ran his mouth down the ribbed pillar of her throat. The heat and pressure of the water was helping the tense muscles and fatigue left over from her earlier plane flight, but the building arousal his touch was eliciting was winding her tighter still.

 

He pulled the comb from her soaking hair and laid it on the nearby soap dish. Keeping her head tilted back, he began working his fingers through the snarls that always formed at her temples. She sighed at feel of his fingers slow work, and he hummed a sound of pleasure low in his throat. He reached to grab something, though his other hand never ceased contact, never paused in its ministrations. He then poured a generous amount of whatever he had retrieved into his palm and began to work it slowly through her hair. The tangles and knots that she had come to accept slipped through his fingers, and he pressed these fingers firmly into her scalp, kneeling away her tension. The oily elixir was gorgeously scented, a mix of almond and bergamot and musk that was coiling through Nell's sinuses like a drug.

 

He tipped her back again to rinse, nipping and gently sucking at the line of her jaw. She dug her fingertips into his shoulder blades to keep up right. He began scratching at her scalp with his blunt nails, and chills starting somewhere near the base of her skull undulated down her spine. She groaned and gripped him tighter, enjoying the languid pace they were setting.

 

"This shower is amazing," she said.

 

David pulled softly at her hair, tipping her head to one side. He bit at the tensed muscle in her neck.

 

"It's why I bought the place, this and the windows," he spoke against her neck, scraping her skin with his teeth, soothing with his tongue. "I think clearest in the shower."

 

His hands traveled lower, sliding over her collarbones to cup her breasts, applying tantalizing pressure to the sensitive tips.

 

"I think about you," he pushed his hips into her, pressing the stiff evidence of his thoughts into her belly. "I think of ideas for albums, for songs, for jokes I want to tell."

 

Nell walked her fingers down his back, leaving one to draw slow designs at the base of his spine, and slipping the other around his length, applying tantalizing pressure of her own. He hummed his approval.

 

She pressed her lips into the soft skin under the hinge of his jaw.

 

"I imagine you have quite a repertoire of songs to sing in the shower."

 

He chuckled again and pinched playfully at a nipple. Nell gasped.

 

"You want I should sing for you?" His voice, so low and rough, sent another shock of heat to her center.

 

"I-- I don't know." She focused on her stroking hand, trying to extract another soft growl from him. "I haven't actually heard you sing. You might not be any good at it."

 

Another pinch. She changed her pressure and quickened her strokes.

 

"You know," she almost gasped. "Recording studio magic."

 

One of his hands left her, turning another of the knobs on the wall. The second shower head sputtered to life, more a curtain of hot rain than its pressurized mate, and David hustled her against the wall beneath it. Nell gasped again, this time at the shock of the cold tiled wall she found herself pressed against.

 

David took this moment of surprise and darted expert fingers into the slick damp between Nell's thighs, before settling his mouth on the shell of her ear.

 

"You can be mean," he hissed. Instantly she knew what he intended to do, and she pushed a bit on his shoulder. He was unmoved and his fingers punished her further.

 

"And I, I'll drink all the time." He was singing now, the song that made her face burn and her heart race. She felt almost limp, and her pushing on his shoulder soon turned to clutching. Her hand at his member began again, though her rhythm was clumsy.

 

"'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact. Yes, we're lovers, and that is that." As if to punctuate his sung declaration, he slid a finger, then two, into her. Her hand faltered and she threw her head back as far as the shower wall would allow, crying out. He only intensified his machinations. Nell bit her lip and focused on matching his power, rubbing the velvet of her inner thigh against him. He slapped a hand against the wet wall and Nell thought perhaps the hot water was waning. That, or the fire coursing through her was numbing her skin the heat.

 

"I!" His voice was broken, and Nell knew he was as close as she was. She slowed her hand, hoping to draw out the moment. Though, with his voice giving life to her most dear mantra, she thought she might be spent before he was.

 

"I can remember, standing by the wall." He leaned his body into hers, burying his face in her neck, sliding lips and teeth over her soaked skin. He hummed and half sang the lyrics, the words not quite matching Nell's memory, but his lovely, silken voice ringing off the porcelain sounded like the loveliest hymn, rising and reaching its crest. She was tumbling towards her own crest, and her voice joined his, though in a song of an entirely different making.

 

The water was definitely running cool now as he nuzzled into her hair. She was splintering around him and he held her fast. Her chest heaved as she rode the wave back to the familiar shoreline, and he sang softly to her.

 

"And the shame was on the other side." He applied an open mouth kiss to the skin in front of her ear. "Mm-mmm... Forever and ever."

 

Arms slung around his neck, she was spent, and terribly happy.

 

He kissed her again, turned off the now cold water and walked to a rack at the door, pulling out a large towel. She sagged against the wall, enjoying watching his confident gait. He began to scrub her down with the rough, nubby towel, keeping satisfied eye contact. She yanked the towel from his hands and pulled him, still damp, from the bathroom.

 

Nell made for the bed, pulling him atop her, wanting to feel his release as completely as she had felt hers. He was reaching to a side table crowded with notebooks and coffee mugs when she pulled his hand back.

 

"You don't have to. I'm on the... We're okay."

 

He collapsed back to her, his hands immediately otherwise occupied.

 

"Nellie." His voice was heated and intense as he buried himself in her. She sighed in fulfillment as she wrapped her arms and legs around him. Her hair was soaking the pillow that was tucked off-center under her head, and his skin was still slick from the shower. The smell of the clean sheets brought back memories of the first night in the studio, of cold paintbrush bristles and silk ties. So long ago, it seemed now, though truly it had only been months, Nell had warned him she only wanted this, just this. She delighted in the ambiguity of the word, now, as "this" had come to encompass so many small, perfect facets.

 

He laid flush against her, his hands traveling from her arms to her hips, tugging at her hair and entangling his fingers in hers. It was as if he couldn't touch enough of her, and she arched into his hands, feeling as if she would never be able to get as close as she wanted. He rocked into her, filling her so completely, and they moved as if one body. Nell turned her head to watch his face, craving that raw intensity he showed to so few. His movements became halting and Nell ran her nails up his back as he came, enjoying the experience as much as if she were climaxing with him. He was gripping her so tightly she imagined she would be bruised and raw in the light of morning as it poured through the wall of windows.

 

She ran comforting hands up and down the length of his back, drifting into a hazy state of half-sleep. After a time, he shifted to lay beside her. She turned her head, and the black look on his face startled her leisurely heart rate painfully.

 

"I don't think I can let you do this, Nellie." He wasn't looking at her, and his voice was hushed and pained, all over again.

 

She propped herself up, a choking hurt in her throat squeezing her voice into a quiet thing.

 

"What do you mean?" Surely, after everything, he hadn't seen some sort of reason over the madness they so readily preferred.

 

"The job in London. I meant it when I said it was excellent. I...talked to Colin before I left." Nell opened her mouth at that, but David didn't pause. "It's the kind of job that will start your whole life. I know all about those."

 

He looked at her then. He reached as if to touch her face, but pulled his hand away.

 

"I can’t let you give that up for me."

 

Nell did reach out to him, and ran fingers over the hard ridge of his cheekbone. His eyes were so serious, and this twinged at her heart more than anything else he had ever done.

 

"I didn't give up the job." She kept her smile small, not wanting to shatter the weight of the moment.

 

His brow crinkled.

 

"I only said that I wasn't moving to London. You're a great lay, David, but I would be stupid to give up that kind of opportunity."

 

He pressed his lips into a thin line, refusing to smile at her chiding.

 

"I talked to Colin, too. And Rita. I'm going to act as a sort of liaison between the two. I'm more taking on a second job, rather than only taking a new one."

 

"Ah," is all he said, almost as if he didn't believe her.

 

"I'll be traveling a lot,” she explained. “But I like that. I enjoy traveling."

 

David did smile at that. "I enjoy traveling, too. I know some places..." He paused, ran his tongue over his dry lips. “I could show you.”

 

Nell ran her fingers down to his chest, toying with the sparse, wiry hair there. “I'd like that,” she whispered.

 

"You know," David said, drawing her eyes back to his face. "If you keep this up, I may just fall in love with you."

 

Nell bit her cheek to keep from smiling.

 

"There are worse things," she said, though that was about all she could manage with the tightness of her throat.

 

His stern look was gone, and he was looking over the contours of her face in a way that made her want to cover her head with the sopping pillow. At long last, he stretched to grab a pack of cigarettes from the side table. She rolled away from him and padded to the bathroom to grab the discarded towel. Though there wasn't much saving the pillow, she wanted to try drying her hair.

 

When she walked back to the bed, David was striking a match, lighting the cigarette clamped between his bared teeth.

 

"What did you put in my hair?" Nell asked as she squeezed dry the silky tendrils. "It feels amazing."

 

He shook out the match and took a long pull on the cigarette.

 

"A deep conditioning oil. It works better when your hair is dry, but that's infinitely less sexy."

 

She eyed him suspiciously. "You use a deep conditioning oil?"

 

He turned onto his back in an exhale of smoke, boldly naked.

 

"I talked to my stylist."

 

Nell grinned. "About me?"

 

David shot her a look. "About your hair."

 

Nell contemplated wrapping herself in the towel, but instead hooked it onto the bathroom doorknob. She walked over to where David lay and plucked the cigarette out of his hand. He looked up at her and she took a long drag, another byproduct of her college years. She exhaled and held the thing between her thumb and forefinger.

 

"You need to stop this," she said with a pointed look. "I know you quit."

 

She leaned over him and stubbed it out in the ashtray on the side table. He caught her around the waist and pulled her, tumbling, back into the bed.

 

He was pinning her down with his hip, and held her wrists in his hands.

 

"I was going through a rough patch," he growled. Hurt panged in her chest, but she squared her jaw. She was done hurting him, now.

 

"Well," she returned, "now you aren't."

 

He looked down at her, though there wasn’t much of a challenge in his gaze. He huffed. "Fine."

 

He released her.

 

"I'll need some coffee. I have a pot here, but I'm out of beans."

 

Nell bounced up, suddenly full of energy.

 

"Let's go out, then." She started pulling on his baggy sweatshirt over her naked body. Still pants-less, she trotted over to the table where he had thrown her gift. She tossed the sweater to him.

 

"You know a place, don't you?"

 

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing the knit of the bronze sweater between his fingers. He looked up, a sated look of peace settling over his face, and pulled it over his head. He made a show of putting his thumbs through the holes in the cuffs.

 

"I do."


	8. Epilogue

"That really tickles." 

Nellie is laid on her stomach across the rickety studio bed, head resting on her crossed arms and feet dangling off one corner. She is naked, but has slung one of the threadbare white blankets over her thighs and bum. 

I am using a Sharpie to draw the vertebrae of her spine down her back. 

Her body always reminds me of those bodies with whom I had so well acquainted myself in the seventies. Lily white and cocaine thin, we were. I know my Nellie is clean, so I can only suppose she is naturally slender. I keep the studio stocked with rich foodstuffs, in hopes I can coax some softness from her bones. 

"What are you even doing?"

I knead at her spine again, feeling for those delicate, avian bones. She is so easily tossed about, there are times I am sure they are hollow. And then, in our most desperate of encounters, I am sure they are leaden, for the beating they can take. And like everything about her, even the notches between the pebbles of her spine speak a story to me. 

I make another mark. 

"Aligning my thoughts."

She huffs at my answer. 

The sound sparks something, the memory of a conversation I had once with a man who had spent his life guarding a penitentiary that would one day imprison his own son. He spoke of irony and betrayal and all I could focus on was the effeminate lilt to his voice. 

I pause my illustrating of Nellie's insides and make a note on the running line of words I have scrawled across the wing of her shoulder blade. I read over what I have written, and make another note on the cluster of words cramped together on her hip.

"Are you ever going to let me see, or listen, to all this stuff you're writing?"

I don’t answer right away; instead I mark out a phrase a couple of lines up from what I’ve just added. I have written quite a lot lately. No, that isn’t true. I’m always writing, I am always toting around half filled notebooks, I always have. But in recent years, I’ve been sitting at the edge of my spun web, all these disconnected words held together with static signal lines. Nellie is the struggling moth that has pulled me from my respite, milking me of further silk as I bind her more completely in this trap I have set. I didn’t know the trap was set for her, and she’s torn down most of the web in her struggle.

She takes much out of me, but I don’t intend to let her go. I hadn’t realised my creative aquifer was not yet dry when she had turned up to wring even more from me.

“Yes.” 

It’s been minutes since she’s asked, and I know my answer frustrates her. I love frustrating her. 

We sink under the placid surface of silence again, and I sketch out another craggy vertebrae. The name “Astrid” treads prickling paths through my mind, as though I have a catchy jingle playing on loop just outside my control. It’s been weeks since I barbed her with that particular quill, and in these weeks I have still not lost the satisfaction her reply kindled. I have no intention of creating a third mother, but her coy calculation won’t leave me be. She bests me more than she realises. I write the name alongside her drawn backbone in hopes of screwing it to the sticking place. Then my hand is still.

“Tell me something.”

The muse speaks. My neck creaks from looking down so long. I roll my stiff shoulders. It might have been an hour I’ve sat here, marker poised over her skin. The tip is dry.

I recap it.

“I nicked some of your notes from the archive that night you sucked me senseless.”

She kicks me. She hates when I’m crass, but I love to watch her color. It’s getting harder to achieve. 

“Charmer. Why’d you steal my notes?”

I pick a coil of her hair off the sheets. I find her hair on everything, now. Long, spiraling hairs the color of weak tea are on all my sweaters, in all my hair brushes, sometimes tangled in the back crevices of my mouth. As if she didn’t pervade enough of my life already.

“I needed a handwriting sample. I’m thinking of getting another tattoo.”

She kicks me again. I catch her ankle and scratch at the arch of her foot. She squirms. Even just that sends a jolt through me, and I’m hardening. 

“Your observations are so keen, and your words so lyrical, I'm having trouble picking a favorite phrase. I’m torn between ‘beautiful genius’ and ‘bat-shit-crazy narcissist.’” 

She tries to tug her ankle out of my grasp and the blanket covering her slips further down her hips. I help it along.

“I’ll write out ‘rat bastard’ and you can just use that.”

She isn't angry. She hikes the blanket back up her body and I consider leaving her unravished for the night. Or, rather, less ravished than she’s already been. I’ll save it for the morning. Having her in the morning is a new favorite, a pleasure we weren’t afforded before.

I uncap the Sharpie again and sketch out the crude beginnings of a wing on small expanse of silken skin I haven’t marked yet.

“I’m going to be in London for a couple of weeks.”

Her voice sounds tired. It must have gotten late when I wasn’t looking. I glance at a dusty wall clock propped against one of the feet of the bed and see that it is actually rather close to getting early. I should let her sleep.

“I’ll bring you back another sweater.” 

She’s trying for something, though I don’t know what it is. I make another note on her shoulder blade.

“Unless you don’t want me to.”

Ah. There it is.

“I’ll miss you while you’re gone, Nellie. I always do.”

Her natural state is insecurity. I’m not one to waste energy on constantly reaffirming what I’ve already said, but I bend just a little for this girl. She’ll know soon enough, I hope.

“You give me a few weeks to clear my head of you, get some actual work done.”

She tenses at that. She doesn’t need to know that she never clears from my head completely. 

“When you come back, I’ll play a song for you.”

About you.

She exhales, and the sound is sweet.

Something switches inside me, and I tuck the blanket around her hips, leaving her prettily marred back exposed.

“Nellie, love, I think I’m going to write some of this on actual paper.”

I see a pattern in the madness I’ve etched all over her and I don’t want to see it running black rivulets across the tiles of my shower. I’ll capture the trickle on paper first, before my ramblings join the rest of the refuse in the sewers. 

She wriggles deeper into the tangle of bedclothes, further from me, and I decide to show her a little more of her power over me.

“If that’s all right…”

I can see her half buried face wrinkle in a small grin at my asking permission. 

“Do what you want, David.”

I never tire of how my name shapes those lips.

“I’m not the boss of you.”

I stand and grab my favored notebook of the week, and tuck a cigarette between my lips. It will remain unlit, but will keep me from satisfying my oral fixation in a more obscene way. Felt tip pen instead of the Sharpie, and I crouch on the floor to decipher what I can from my Nellie’s body. 

Her almost childish words are ricocheting painfully in my skull.

Who’d have ever thought.

“Aren’t you, though?” 

I can’t tell if she’s heard me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is end of this story, but not the end of these two. I've got so many ideas of day-in-the-life oneshots rattling around my brain, I know it won't be long before I write more about my favorite couple. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!


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